We have been looking at and considering the idea of online tutoring for awhile. With the imposition of social distancing and the closing of so many offices and facilities, online seems to be where most people are nowadays. This has caused us to revisit the idea of online tools for effective online math tutoring and in particular, online whiteboards. First, we had to ask ourselves a few questions.
What is required for a good math tutoring session?
- The student and tutor need to be able to communicate with ease and freely.
- Communication includes talking, writing, body language, facial expressions.
- A way for both the student and tutor to be able to write on the same space so that both can see what is going on, is needed.
- The math exercises and problems that the student is having trouble with, text book exercises, old tests, assignments, assignment problems etc.
- The notes that have been given and taught by the teacher in the class.
Now that we know what is needed for the ideal tutoring sessions, how is this achieved? In person is the best way to check off all these points. However, in person isn’t always feasible for many reasons and with technology, online is real part of life. So, our next questions was,
How do we answer the above points through online tutoring?
We gave this much thought and the first couple of points on communication were the first we had to address. We needed to find a way to communicate in writing, verbally and through body language or facial expression, if possible.
- Some sort of online means of collaborative writing and sharing,
- And then some sort of facetime or voice chat for the verbal and facial expression.
An online whiteboard was a solution to #1 and some sort of online meeting tool or facetime like Zoom, Skype or Messenger would take care of #2. Zoom is great because no app has to be downloaded. A link from the meeting organizer has to be sent to the participants and then a webpage opens up. This makes Zoom ideal for both PC and Mac users.
The 4th and 5th points were easier as picture of notes could be taken and emailed or messaged to the tutor or put in a common drive, folder in the cloud somewhere that both student and tutor have access to. So, these two points weren’t as much of a concern, but #1 was the challenge. Now we asked ourselves,
Are there any online whiteboards and what are they?
After much searching, below is a review of our shortlist of online whiteboards that we found.
Online whiteboards
Limnu
- They have a free trial for 14 days. Good way to try and test it out.
- It is made in the US.
- This one is just a board that can be shared and written on by whomever the creator chooses to share it with.
- The option of a whiteboard, blackboard and grease board environment. All boards have the same functionality.
- It has the messenger and video and voice feature. Unfortunately, when we tried it, it ended up being rather echo-y. So, it was not that great to use. The messenger and video window takes up space on the board so there is less writing space when that feature is open.
- It has the usual features of being able to upload a picture to the board and then being able to download the content that has been written on the board.
- When it downloads a board, however, it just takes a screen shot, rather than copying the entire board. This means you have to shrink everything you did onto one screen before you can download all of it. This is kind of a drag because it can end up making everything really small.
- Pricing is $5/month for the pro. However, if more than one person wants to create a board and share a board at the same time, two subscriptions would have to be purchased.
Stormboard
- This one has a lot of features. It is way more than a whiteboard.
- It’s almost confusing and probably not what you need if you’re just looking to work on some math problems with someone.
- It is definitely something that would be of value to people in meetings who aren’t in the same location, like online meetings requiring brainstorming, organization etc.
- The white board is one small option out of many and is ok.
- It has most of the other whiteboard characteristics features.
- However, when downloading the board, it doesn’t look all that great. It’s hard to read.
- There is a free version. So, I guess that’s nice. ( Personal $0 )
- It’s Canadian from Edmonton.
AWW – A web whiteboard
- This one is just a whiteboard.
- It’s pretty basic and simple compared to the others.
- It has the usual ability to upload a file or picture; pens with different widths and colours, eraser.
- What I like about it is that when you go to export your board you have the option of exporting it as a pdf or an image. All the others have been just images. The pdf option is great for downloading. To me this makes it a winner because it’s just easier to review a pdf file than an image.
- It looks like there is a pdf upload option too and a powerpoint upload option.
- Cheapest is $10 for business or $9 for teacher. It’s not clear to me if you can have a teacher plan without the school plan. There is a 30 day free trial.
- I cannot figure out where they are from.
Web Whiteboard
- Free.
- No login
- Was fine to use. Could upload a file that is a picture.
- It seems to allow for one page at a time on a white board.
- The trouble was downloading the content written on the whiteboard and starting up a new whiteboard. Sometimes it was very slow starting up a white board and downloading.
Whiteboard Fox
- No login that I could see.
- Seems to be free.
- I tried it at 1:30am and it loaded up fine. However, during peak times, it was a lot slower to load up.
- It wasn’t bad. I could upload a picture onto the board and download the board content as a picture.
- It had less features to write with, just a pen with different colours and an eraser. No high lighter or different pen sizes.
- UK company.
Mural
- I think there is the option to just try it for free.
- It looks like it’s used by companies more than individuals.
- Not clear where the whiteboard is.
- Seems like there is a lot more there than just a white board. Reminds me of stormboard.
- Once in, I couldn’t figure out how to write. It’s like I had to hold the button on my pen and write. Unnecessarily complicated.
Microsoft Whiteboard
https://products.office.com/en-ca/microsoft-whiteboard/digital-whiteboard-app
- Microsoft has a whiteboard app.
- It seems to be a free download. However, you have to signup to Microsoft office, make sure your device is connected. A bit of a production to be able to use it. But once installed, it’s great.
- It has the usual features other whiteboards have, writing and erasing tools, ability to upload pictures to the board. The board content can be downloaded, as a picture.
- Limitations:
- Opening and working with multiple online whiteboards during the same session with someone can become confusing.
- When a picture is uploaded by anyone, or when something is written or drawn, that becomes and image that can be moved by mistake if you’re not careful
BitPaper
- Looks like this is free.
- You can just start sharing a whiteboard.
- You can upload pictures
- And you can download the board as a pdf or save it.
- Can be used on Chrome, Safari, Firefox but not on Explorer.
- Save is only on their system. However, saving as a pdf allows you to save to you computer but only the screen that is visible not the entire board’s content.
Zoom Meeting
- They seem to have a whiteboard under their screen share feature.
- It’s free to one on one meetings.
- However, the whiteboard is one way. This is not great for being able to work on a problem together with someone.
There are many other online whiteboards out there. This just a short list of online whiteboards we have come across and tried. If I was to choose my top three choices, I would choose the Microsoft Whiteboard first as this is already on my computer! Second would be AWW, A Web Whiteboard because it is so easy to use. And third would probably be BitPaper because it is free and can be used in a pinch if nothing else is available. As a compliment to online whiteboards is the stylus, or some what to write on your computer screen. Take a look at our post on How to write math online? – Technology and online learning to learn more.
