Using Online Whiteboards For Teaching: It's Not as Difficult as You Think

For many teachers, the whiteboard is a common staple that makes up any classroom. It’s usually the main focus of the room, with teachers using them to break down information to explain subjects to their students.

But since the shift to remote learning, many teachers have had to adapt their teaching styles as they move their lessons online. The lack of physical interaction with students and classroom tools can make teaching online difficult. However, online whiteboard for teaching can make a huge difference to the virtual learning experience.

What is an online whiteboard?

Online whiteboards essentially do everything that you’d expect from a traditional physical whiteboard, but with the added bonus of being able to connect to the internet and digitalize your written notes. Using an online whiteboard for teaching allows you to add text and images to your board, as well as choose from a range of pens and colors to further customize your notes. The fact that digital whiteboards are online make them a really handy tool for storing information, with some online whiteboard software allowing you to add files, documents and more to your board - turning them into a handy hub of resources for both teachers and students alike.

Benefits of using online whiteboards for teaching

Using online whiteboards for tutoring is a great way for teachers to continue to explain and break down subject content in a way that’s easy for students to understand. If you’re holding your classes via video calls, you can easily share a digital whiteboard on your screen for your pupils to see. This can help teachers to transition smoothly from their normal face-to-face teaching styles in the classroom to teaching virtually.

Digital whiteboards are also great for keeping teachers’ notes organized. With a traditional whiteboard, you would normally take a cloth and wipe away all your notes at the end of the class. However, when using an online whiteboard for teaching, some software allows you to save these notes which you can reference again at a later time. This is also great for students, as you can share your notes with them after class - allowing them to focus their attention on your lesson rather than worrying about taking notes and missing information.

Keeping students engaged can be difficult - and this is likely to be even more of a challenge for teachers trying to tutor remotely. Using an online whiteboard for teaching means that you have a tool to help capture and hold your students’ attention. For example, you could use a digital whiteboard to hold an interactive activity. You can add your students’ suggestions to the board using different colors and group them together into different themes by adding images for further inspiration. As an online tool, digital whiteboards can also be accessed from multiple devices - meaning your students can view your whiteboard on their own devices at home! This gives you the option to let your students add their own contributions to the board during a group activity, further helping to keep them engaged and focused.

As mentioned above, using online whiteboards for tutoring can act as a great hub of information. Some online whiteboard software allows you to add multiple attachments and files to your board, such as videos, web links and more. This can help teachers to maintain the flow of their lesson by easily opening up a video directly from the whiteboard, without wasting time searching through multiple internet tabs or folders. Having all your lesson notes stored together in one space is a great way to stay organized and keep your lessons on track.

How to use Ayoa’s online whiteboard software

Now that we’ve gone over some of the benefits of using online whiteboards for tutoring, let’s look at how you can go about choosing the best online whiteboard software for you.

Unlike other software on the market, Ayoa is an all-in-one collaborative online whiteboard, which gives you the flexibility to not only capture notes and generate ideas, but it also contains handy task management features and mind maps to help you manage your work from start to finish.

Ayoa’s whiteboards contain a host of useful features for teachers to use when tutoring, from sticky notes, lists and images, to flowcharts, file attachments, sketch tools and more. See below some of the ways you could use Ayoa for teaching:

Break down your lesson plan:

Ayoa’s whiteboards allow you to easily add sections to your board. These sections help you to easily group related content and information together. You can also choose from a range of colors to help differentiate each of your sections, so you can divide up your lesson materials in the way that suits you.

Add additional resources:

Ayoa allows you to add a range of file attachments directly to your whiteboard, including PDFs, Word documents, images, videos and more. Try adding a section to your whiteboard named ‘additional resources’ - here, you can group together all the relevant information for your lesson. You can then share your whiteboard with your students after the class, so they can access any additional reading materials in their own time.

Keep students engaged:

If you’re interested in using online whiteboards to keep your students engaged, Ayoa’s collaborative nature makes it the perfect tool for interacting with your students remotely. With a range of colors, shapes and sizes for sticky notes, for example, you can use these to help represent different ideas and themes in your lesson content, or simply to keep your whiteboard visually stimulating and exciting. Using these features during interactive activities is a great way to keep your students actively engaged and participating in your lessons.

If you’re ready to start using online whiteboard software to make teaching an easier and more engaging experience, be sure to look out for software like Ayoa that gives you a range of creative features that you can use to suit any lesson - from creative functionalities like sticky notes and lists to collaborative features and file attachments. So whether you want to use an online whiteboard for tutoring and teaching remotely or even when you’re back in the physical classroom, you have a tool that helps you keep your teaching notes organized and your students actively absorbed in your lessons.