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Giving lessons using a digital whiteboard

This simple tutorial will show you how to use and share a digital whiteboard to give remote lessons. A word of advice upfront: be patient. This is a simple process and you can get going very quick, depending on your approach and existing hardware, but it may also take time. Think about this as an investment to help you deliver more effective remote learning; so set aside a couple of hours to learn, try, relearn and try again :)  

Step 1. Install or access a whiteboard app

If you Google "whiteboard application" you will get lots of alternatives. Pick the one that best suites your needs. For this tutorial I picked Microsoft Whiteboard.

Step 2. Learn how to use a whiteboard app

Launch the whiteboard app and familiarize yourself with its tools. You will see ways to draw, insert images, etc.  Click around and see what each tool does. Spend as much time as you need to feel comfortable. Think about this tool similar to how you think about Word and Excel, you need to learn the basics to be productive. 

Step 4. Draw in the whiteboard app. 

You will be able to draw using your mouse, and, depending on your hardware and budget, you have additional alternatives.

A)If you have a touchscreen computer, you can draw directly there with your finger. Additionally if your computer came with a pen, great, you can use that. If you don't have a pen most modern touchscreen computers work with cheap pens.

If you don't have a touchscreen and still want to use your hand to draw, you have a couple of alternatives:

B) Buy a digitizer tablet. These are devices that allow you to use pen input and send that to your computer. There are plenty to choose from on Amazon. If I were to buy one, I would probably pick VEIKK based on the reviews and price. 

Using a digitizer is pretty straight forward. You connect it to your computer using USB and that is pretty much it, if you are in the whiteboard app and you draw on the pad you will see the results on your screen. Some digitizers have additional features so take the time to understand how your particular digitizer works. 

C)Use another tablet, such as an IPad as your input device. Here is a good video showing you how to do that. 

Step 5. Share your whiteboard screen remotely

Depending on the tool that you use, the steps will be different but all tools share the same fundamentals. For this tutorial I picked Microsoft Teams. I assume you are already familiar with whatever tool you use so I won't spend time on the basics for such tools. 

If you already know how to share applications and/or your desktop in Microsoft Teams, then you already know this step; sharing the whiteboard app is no different than sharing any other app like Word or PowerPoint. For the whiteboard app, when you are in the Teams meeting you hit the "Share" button and select the "Microsoft Whiteboard" app from the list and that's it, everyone on the meeting can see what you are drawing.   

If you don't want people to see your video, you can always turn off your camera in Microsoft Teams, just hit the camera icon.

If you need a refresher of how to do the above in Microsoft Teams, check this video


Step 6 (optional). Invite others to collaborate

If you want others to collaborate, so they can also create, on the whiteboard app you may also be able to do that. If you are using the Microsoft Whiteboard app, you can easily click the sharing icon and that will generate a link you can send others to join.  I would however caution against trying to collaborate on a whiteboard until you have successfully mastered the basic sharing your screen steps. 

Alternatives to using a whiteboard app

What if you still want to share something but don't want to use a whiteboard app? Well, you can always use another camera (or your phone's camera) to stream what you are doing. Maybe buy an overhead tripod/stand to make things easier. This is adequate for art classes or something where you need to show physical objects as part of the class. But if all you want to share are things you will draw on a whiteboard, I would recommend using a whiteboard app instead. 

Alright, that's it for this article, hopefully it helped you some.  Happy teaching! :) 

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