Live and Asynchronous Teaching using Whiteboard.Chat

As a teacher, you usually prepare well before the class is to begin. You may teach the same class to different sets of students. You need an intuitive and effective system that enables preparation of classes, replication of material across classes, and yet manage them separately so that you can assess students’ progress in each class. You also want the ability for your students to continue to work on their assignments even after your class has ended and you are no longer there. And finally, at the end of a busy day, you may go back to your students’ work, and assess them.

In this article we describe step-by-step how you can use whiteboard.chat, a free to use virtual one-to-many remote teaching whiteboard, to prepare for live classes, and work with your students asynchronously.

Let us take an example of a math teacher teaching two classes of separate students, one at 10 am in the morning and another one at 1 pm in the afternoon. Teacher wants to familiarize place value charts, and movement of decimal points using multiplication and division.

Note that in order to manage your boards, the instructor is required to sign-in using Google/Facebook or email address, but students can still access their boards without signing in. However, we will show you below that it will be easier if a student has also signed-in, especially if they wish to continue to work on their assignments well after the class has ended.

Step 1: Prepare for morning 10 am class

(a) Create your instructor board at whiteboard.chat

(b) Sign-in using Google/Facebook or signed-up email address

Click on “Settings” icon on the upper right corner to open the dialogue for sign-in

Sign-in with Google/Facebook or your Email address. You would notice the change of “Avatar” at the upper right side of the board.

(c) Change name of the board “Math Class 10 am”

(d) Upload multi-page place value assignment pdf

Click on “Upload File” from left side panel and upload your place value chart PDF from your computer

(e) You are now ready to teach place value chart to your 10 am class

Step 2: Replicate your material for your 1 pm class

(a) Save a copy of your morning 10 am class for 1 pm class

Click on “Save a Copy” from under “Manage Books” from the left side panel.

Enter the Name of your class, in this case, “Math Class 1 pm”

(b) Go to manage boards and have a look how your board is saved

Click on “Manage Boards” from left side panel and you will be able to see your saved board as below

Step 3: Live teaching 10 am class

(a) Invite students to your 10 am math class

Click on “Invite”, and paste the link to any messaging platform (Zoom Chat, Microsoft Team Chat, Send over email, etc.)

(b) Ask your students to change their board names

This step is not required, but it will be easier for students to find their boards later if they also change their board names to “Math Class 10 am”

(c) Teach, explain, and work with students

You can now teach, explain, view students’ work in a grid view, join their boards to help them correct their work the usual way. Let us say at the end of the class your student is not yet done working on their place value chart and they have some more work to do or correct their current work.

Step 4: Teach your 1 pm class

(a) Select “Manage Boards” from the landing page of Whiteboard.Chat

(b) Select “Math Class 1 pm”

Select “Math Class 1 pm” from the manage board view by clicking on the arrow at the bottom right corner of the tile

Your instructor board will have the place value chart preloaded and you are ready to start inviting students and teaching them

Step 5: Student of Math Class 10 am continues work on their board

(a) The student can continue to work on their board if they have not closed their browser window.

(b) If they have closed their browser or window, there are two ways they can get back to their Math Class 10 am board

(i) If a student is registered with whiteboard.chat using google or email, they can goto whiteboard.chat, and select “Manage Boards”, just like an instructor.

They will see their board “Math Class 10 am” as below, which they can launch by clicking on the arrow in the bottom right corner of the tile

They can now continue their work where they left it off

(ii) If a student is not registered, but if they have saved the link they received for the original invite from the teacher, they copy and paste it in their browser and access their board.

For asynchronous teaching to work seamlessly, without any hassle, we recommend they students either save the links to their boards on their devices as a word or text file, or they sign-up using their Google account.

Step 6: At the end of the day, teacher revisits Math Class 10 am and assesses students work

(a) Like before, teacher selects “Manage Boards” from whiteboard.chat landing page

(b) They will see a managed board view like below

(c) They can expand their classes by selecting “Show Class Boards”

This expanded view shows the students boards for each of their classes.

They have an option to directly launch students’ board or launch their main instructor board and then goto the student’s board the way they would otherwise do while teaching a live class

(d) Launching Student’s board from Match Class 10 am and correcting it

They can now simply end their window, or click on “Goto Instructor” to go back to Grid View and work on other students’ boards.

A Few Logistical Information on Storage of Your Boards:

Whiteboard.Chat by default saves all boards for 3 days. You can find out how long your boards will be saved by looking at “Expires On” date on the bottom left corner of your Managed Boards tiles like below

If you have logged in using your Google account, you can save your board for longer.

Every time you access your boards, and make changes, the expiry date will also change accordingly.

In Summary:

As described above, whiteboard.chat’s “Manage Boards” and “Save Copy” features give teachers and students an ability to not only be part of a live real-time class, but also to work asynchronously on the assigned work after the class is over.

As always, if you run into any issues while trying out above described steps, please contact us at feedback@whiteboard.chat or be part of our community group at Facebook where you can share tips and gain support from the community of teachers.