Seeing student work in real time is challenging with remote instruction and remote students. Whiteboard Chat aims to solve this problem. It is a digital whiteboard much like Whiteboard.fi that I sent out in a tech tip a couple of weeks ago. Digital whiteboards allow the teacher to create and share their whiteboard with the students. With this tool, the teacher can spotlight student boards to the whole class, teachers can see student work in real time, and the teacher can control who enters their whiteboard classroom and when students can be drawing on their boards. One thing that Whiteboard Chat has over Whiteboard.fi is that it has a built in video conferencing tool. With Whiteboard Chat, teachers can video conference with their students in real time as they are working on their boards which would be extremely helpful when working with students having difficulty with a certain concept or skill.
Pros
- See student work in real time
- Share digital whiteboards with class
- Control who is in your digital whiteboard class
- Freeze whiteboards to prevent students from working while the teacher is explaining
- Have students collaborate on one board
- Spotlight student boards to the whole class
- Video conference with students to work through problems and provide supports
- Create digital boards ahead of time to share with students
Cons
- Tools are not as intuitive as other boards and does take some getting use to
- Video conferencing is not on the same screen as the whiteboard (will need to toggle back and forth)
- Boards are saved on whiteboard Chat