FAQ on How to Start Teaching a Live Class using Whiteboard.Chat
Published in
7 min readSep 29, 2020
How can Whiteboard.chat work with Zoom or Google Meet-up video conferencing?
- You can use Zoom, or Google Meet-up to start your video conferencing, and launch whiteboard.chat from your browser in a separate window.
- Once on instructor board, you can invite students by copying the link in the Zoom or Google Meet-up chat window
- Students can click on that link and join the whiteboards in their own browser as a separate window to the video conferencing or as a separate tab in the same browser
- Both teacher and students can have both windows side-by-side or they can switch between them.
- Same steps would work for Google Classroom and Canvas
- If you face any issues or have questions about how to use whiteboard.chat with any of these other tools, kindly send us an email at feedback@whiteboard.chat
How to upload worksheets or images to the whiteboard?
- This is very simple. You can do this multiple ways.
- Just click on “Upload” icon from the left side panel, select the file from your computer and upload on the board.
- If the uploaded file is a multi-page PDF, each page will be displayed on its own board and you can switch to different pages by using clicking on pagination icons “<” and “>” on the lower left corner.
- You can also copy the text/tables etc. with Cmd/Ctrl-V and paste it using Cmd/Ctrl-C.
Can students see each other’s boards?
- No. Students can not see each other’s boards.
- They can only see what the teacher is writing/drawing which gets replicated on all students’ boards.
How can a teacher see all of their students’ work in real time?
- Once students are invited and have joined, a teacher can click on “Grid View” at the bottom of their instructor board.
- It will take them to a new screen where they can see a birds-eye view of students boards, 9 at a time, in 3 rows of 3 columns each
- If the class has more than 9 students, than teacher can go to the next 9 students boards by clicking on page numbers on the lower left corner of their board
- They can use the page numbers to go back and forth and have a complete view of all of their students boards in real-time.
How can a teacher join a student’s board or look at what they are doing?
- From the Grid-View, a teacher can click on any student’s board to zoom in to and expand their board to see what they are doing
- To join the student’s board as a collaborator, or to correct their work, or to help them out, click on “Join”.
- To go back to Instructor’s board, click on “Goto Instructor” on the lower center of the board
Is it possible to prevent students from starting work on their boards till the teacher has had a chance to prepare?
- Yes. A teacher can now lock the boards so students can not make any changes or start working.
- From the Instructor board, a teacher can click on “Avatar” on the upper right, and it will open up a pop-up window.
- Select “Lock Class”. This will lock all students’ boards and they will see a message “Board Locked by Teacher”.
- To unlock, simply click on the “Avatar” on the upper right and select “Unlock Class”.
Can students be assigned to groups/break-out rooms? How does it work?
- Yes. A teacher can assign multiple students to a group. This is how it can be done.
- From Instructor’s board, a teacher can click on the “Avatar” on the top right corner of the board
- It will open up a dialogue, with a button to “Create Group Board”.
- Next you will see a pop-up, where all students/participants are listed on the left side and you can select them and start assigning them to groups.
- Give a name to the group created and click on “Create Group”
- For more detailed step-by-step instructions on students’ break-out rooms/groups please refer to the article here.
Can a student erase or modify what a teacher has written/uploaded?
- No. Students can only erase or modify or overwrite their own drawn or written objects.
- They can not do anything with what a teacher has written or drawn or uploaded.
How can I add a co-teacher to my class?
- Adding a co-teacher is very easy. You click on “Avatars” on the upper right.
- It will open up a pop-up window where you will see all participants listed.
- Next to the participants you will see an Up Arrow. Clicking on the Up Arrow will make that participant a co-teacher. You should see the Up Arrow turn Green and your selected co-teacher will have Grid View and other instructor functions readily available on their board.
- To stop someone from being a co-teacher, click on “Avatar” again. Clicking on the same Green Up Arrow will stop that participant from being a co-teacher and they will go back to being a student.
How can I showcase a student’s work to the whole class?
- Click on the top right “Avatars”
- Against the participants’ list, you shall see a “Settings” icon
- Clicking on the “Settings” icon against any participant, will allow the instructor to replicate that student’s board across all other boards. There will be a message “Showcase Student Board” on the upper right of the instructor’s board.
- To stop sharing a student’s work with the entire class, click on the “Settings” icon inside the message “Showcase Student Board”.
How can I send a link to videos or other material to all of my students? Will I know if they actually opened the links?
- To send a link to students, click on “New Poll” on the upper right corner of the instructor board
- It will open up a drawer where there is a drop down menu under “Action”
- Select “Send Link”
- Paste your link and on the top of the drawer select the students to whom you wish to send the link to and click “Send”
- Students will see a message on their board “Click to Open” and Instructor will have status under “Poll”. As and when students click on their links, the status under “Poll” will change to “done”.
Is it possible to create a quick poll?
- Yes. You can create a very simple poll, send it out to students and collect results all in real-time.
- Click “New Poll” on the upper right of instructor’s board
- Under “Action”, select “Send Poll”
- The poll has to be typed in a specific format: e.g. Who is the president of the USA? Biden, Trump, Pence. The format is like this: question, followed by “?” and then answers separated by commas.
- The question and their multi-choice answers will show up as a message on students’ boards and as they click on their answers, the instructor will know under “Poll” on their board.
How can a student ask for help? How will the teacher know who needs help?
- Whenever a student needs any help or assistance from a teacher, they can click on the “Hands” icon on their board’s upper right.
- A message with the student’s name will pop-up under the “Hands” icon on the instructor’s board.
- At this time, the instructor can switch to grid view, and click on a student’s board to zoom in. Clicking on “Join” will allow the teacher to goto student’s board and address their concern.
- Once the questions/concerns are addressed, the student can click on the same “Hand” icon again to bring down their hand
Can a teacher send a message to all students at the same time, without individually writing to each student?
- Yes this is possible. A teacher first needs to enable chat function. To do that, click on the “Avatar”. In the pop-up, you can select “Create Chat”.
- Now a “Chat” icon will appear on all boards.
- A teacher’s message can be seen by all students, but a student’s response or message will only be seen by the teacher.
Can students talk to other students? How and when?
- No. Students can not talk to each other, unless they are part of the same group or break-out room and there is a chat function enabled.
How can a teacher conduct a timed activity with students?
- From the instructor’s board, click on the “Timer” icon on the upper right
- It will ask a timer value in minutes
- Click on “Set Timer” and timer will show up on all students boards
- To stop the timer prematurely, just click on the “Timer” icon inside the timer
For teaching Math, or English alphabets, is it possible to add symbols and alphabet tiles to the board?
- Yes. From instructor’s board, select “Palette” icon from the upper right corner
- It will open up a drawer from the right side.
- You can select Math, Alphabet and even Music
- And you can now individually select the symbols you need for your Math, English or Music classes and drop them in to the whiteboard
Here are a set of articles that can be useful as you start using Whiteboard for Live Teaching:
