Teacher’s Guide to Whiteboard.Chat

In this guide we have put together instructions for a teacher to utilise free interactive online whiteboard.chat’s tools and features to engage with students effectively.

1. Getting Started #

Create Instructor Board #

1. Point your internet enabled device’s browser to https://www.whiteboard.chat

2. Click on Start Drawing and Select Start Teaching

Whiteboard.Chat with Zoom or Other Video Conferencing #

3. You can use Whiteboard.Chat with Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams video conferencing

1. You launch your Zoom, Meet or Teams video conferencing the usual way
2. Open a separate browser window where you can now point to whiteboard.chat, and start teaching
3. No need to share your screen since all of your students see your work in real time replicated on their boards
4. Keep your Zoom, Google Meet and Teams window in the background where your students can see your video and you can see their faces
5. You can continue to teach at your whiteboard browser window

2. Finding Your Way Around Instructor Board #

Board Controls #

1. On the left side of the board, you will find most of your controls

Moving Between Pages #

2. Using ‘<’ and ‘>’ on the lower left corner of the board, you can move between pages of your book

Setting the Name of Instructor Board #

3. At the top middle of the board, you can change the name of the board to reflect the class you are teaching

Class Control Panel #

4. Here are the purpose of various controls on the upper right side of the board
   1. Help : Clicking here will open up a window with link to navigation help, tutorial videos, link to register for our upcoming webinars, and link to this guide and other guides.
   2. Hand : The names of the students needing help will show up here. Clicking on the name, will take you directly to the student’s board
   3. Timer : Click here to set a timer for a timed activity and the countdown timer will be shown on all students boards
   4. Avatars : Clicking here will show you the list of students, along with a few more student controls discussed below
   5. Settings : Clicking here will open up a dialogue for you to sign-up and login. Note that signing up is only required if you wish to save your work for future under “Manage Boards”
   6. Invite : Clicking here will open up a dialogue with links and class code to send it to students so they can join your class. This is described in detail further below in this document.

Board Color, Text Size, Font, and Highlighter #

5. On the top center of the board, you will see a box to change your name, change the size of text and drawing brush and increase/decrease the opacity of the brush so you can use it as a highlighter.

Student View Controls #

6. In the middle lower of the board, you will find Grid View that can take you to a screen where you can see up to 9 students boards at the same time.

Take a look at our Navigation Guide to Tools and Features of Whiteboard.Chat.

3. Preparing for Live Class #

1. Change the Name of the Board: It is advisable to change the name of your Instructor Board to reflect the class you are teaching. This will help if you wish to save your boards for future use. 

2. Upload Teaching Material: Next you may like to upload teaching material like your slides, worksheets, other reading that you wish to discuss with the class. Note that Whiteboard.Chat allows up to 40 pages of PDF file and images to be uploaded. 

1. Open the left side panel
2. Select Upload File
3. Select the files to be uploaded from your computer

3. Push your PDF or other teaching material in the background so students and you can annotate over it, as well as you can place other images on top of it.

1. Select the PDF or image by clicking on Select from left side panel and then clicking on the PDF/Image
2. Select Set Background

4. Each page of your uploaded file will automatically add pages to your book which you can browse through using ‘<’ and ‘> at the lower left corner of the board.

5. Set the Background Grid : Depending on what you are teaching, you may wish to also change the grid of the board. You have the following options which you can access and select by clicking on the “Grid” from the left side panel

6. Now you are ready to use drawing, writing, math symbols, alphabet symbols, math manipulatives etc. to finalize your board. 

Take a look at our FAQ on Preparing for a Live Class at Whiteboard.Chat.

4. Controlling Students Activities #

Before you invite students to your classboard, you have the following options to control what your students could do on the Whiteboard.Chat

Change Settings for your Board #

1. Mandatory login : You may want to ensure that only students who have created their accounts at whiteboard.chat can join the class.
2. Preventing students from writing on each other’s boards : By selecting this option, you prevent students from drawing or writing on other students’ boards.

Both of the above controls are available by clicking on the Setting icon at the upper right corner of the board. It will open up the dialogue shown below where you can select the above options.

Make Students Follow Teacher #

3. Enforce that Students Follow Teachers as a teacher move to a different page of their board.

This option will ensure that students are on the same page of the board as the teacher. 

Select Avatars, and select Follow Teacher. 

Lock Objects #

4. Locking Objects so no one can accidentally erase it. You can lock certain objects by Selecting it and choosing Lock

Locking/Unlocking Students’ Boards #

5. Locking the entire class

You may want to lock the entire class from doing anything on their respective boards till you are ready, and you ask them to do so. This is to prevent students from starting working before you have had a chance to prepare the board, upload your worksheets, etc. 

You can do so, by selecting the Avatars from the upper right corner, and selecting Lock Class as shown below.

Once locked, all students’ and teacher boards will have a notification like below

The Teacher can unlock by 

1. Select Avatars and select Unlock Class to unlock students’ boards.
2. Or simply click on the Lock symbol in the image above to unlock boards

5. Inviting Students to Your Class #

To Invite students to join your class, click on “Invite” on the upper right corner, which will open up a dialogue shown below. 

1. You can Copy the URL and paste it at Zoom chat, Google Classroom, Google Meet chat, Microsoft Teams chat or any other communication channel that you are using to notify your students
2. You can also send the Class Code and paste it at any of the above
3. Or you can click on Open Email, and send the Class Code or URL as an email to your students

Note: To invite students, always click on the Invite and use the link, or class code as described above, and do not use the URL from your browser’s site URL.

6. Observe, Help and Communicate with Students in Real Time #

Get a Birds-Eye View of Students Boards #

1. The Teacher can use the Grid View, accessible from the middle bottom of the board, to see a birds-eye view of 9 students boards at a time. They can see in real-time what the students are working on.

2. Clicking on any board will expand the board.

Join Student’s Board #

3. Clicking on Join will make the Teacher part of the Student’s board, where they can help the student, correct their work, and give feedback.

4. After the feedback, clicking on Goto Instructor will take the Teacher back to their own board and they can continue teaching

Moving Between Grids of Students’ Boards #

5. From the Grid View, clicking on ‘<’ and ‘>’ at the lower left corner, will show the next 9 students boards. 

Notification of Student Needing Help #

6. At any given time, a student may Raise Hand to ask for teacher’s help. The Teacher will see the following on their board.

7. Clicking on Student 1 in the box above will take the Teacher directly to that student’s board, where they can offer help and feedback. Once the student has clicked on the Hand symbol again, the notification from the Teacher’s board will go away.

Communicating with Students using Chat #

8. The Teacher can also enable class wide chat functionality by clicking on Avatars and then selecting Create Chat as shown below.

9. Once enabled, a Chat icon will appear on the lower right corner on the instructor’s board.

10. Note that the Chat will not show up on students’ boards until the teacher initiates a message. Only after that Students will see the Chat icon on their boards.

11. All students will see the teacher’s message, but they can not see each other’s message. The teacher will receive all of their students’ messages. 

7. Polls, Links and Timed Activities #

1. Poll is our experimental feature, using which a specially structured question with comma separated answers can be sent as a poll to all students. Here is how a question has to be structured:

“Question” ? “answer 1”, “answer 2”, “answer 3”

Note: The question must be followed by a “?”. And each possible answer must be separated by a comma “,”.

Click on Poll. And then type in your question and answers as shown below.

2. The poll will show up on the Student’s board as below.

3. Student’s answer will appear to the Teacher as below.

4. Similarly, a Teacher can send a link to external material, like a video or a website to students and they will get a notification for each student that has opened that link. 

5. This is how the link notification will show on the Student’s board.

6. Once clicked, the teacher will get the notification that a student has opened the link.

7. If a teacher wishes to give a time bound activity that students must finish within a stipulated time, then they can use the Timer functionality. Clicking on the Timer icon from the upper right corner will open a dialogue where the teacher can specify the time in minutes.

8. Timer will show on all boards like below.

8. Adding a Co-Teacher #

1. To add a co-teacher to your class, first make sure that your co-teacher has joined the class as a student first
2. Click on Avatars and then select the participant you wish to make a co-teacher by selecting Make Teacher as shown below

3. Now the newly made co-teacher will have similar controls available to them to co-teach the class. 
4. To un-do co-teacher, select Avatars again, from the Instructor board Or from the Co-teacher board, and select Undo Teacher as shown below

9. Break-out Groups #

1. To assign participants into sub-group, select Avatars and select Create Group Board. It will open up a dialogue to assign participants into a group and give a name to the group.

2. Once the group is created, those part of the group will see their board change into a collaborative group as shown below.

3. To delete the group, again click on Avatar, and select Delete next to the group name.

10. Showcasing a Student’s Board with Entire Class #

1. Click on Avatars, and select Showcase next to the participant whose work you wish to share with the rest of the class as shown in the picture above.
2. Now all students will be able to see the board of the student whose work is being showcased.
3. Instructor can cancel sharing of student’s board by clicking on X in the message notification as shown below

11. Rewarding Students #

1. Click on Palette symbol from the upper right corner of the board to open a drawer shown below and select Rewards

2. You can now select the reward and place it on the board.

12. Sharing Your Work with Other Teachers #

Send Link to Your Board #

1. Select Manage Book from left side panel and select Send a Copy

2. It will open up a dialogue for you to copy the link and send it over email, or pasting it at any communication channel

Copy and Delete a Page from Book #

1. Copy Page will replicate the current page to the next one. Note that for this feature to work, your next page must not have been visited or clicked on.
2. Delete Page will delete the current page from your book

Deleting the Board Permanently  #

3. Delete Forever will delete the entire board permanently and you will not be able to recover it

13. Managing Boards for Different Classes #

Saving a Copy of your Board #

1. Select Save a Copy from left side panel

2. Enter a name for your future class and click Save
3. You should be able to see your classes in a tile view like below

Launching Pre-saved Copy for Future Class #

4. Now when you are ready to teach say your Math Class at 1 pm, you select Manage Boards from the main page of whiteboard.chat

5. It will take you to a Manage Board tile view like below, from where you can now click on the class you wish to start teaching

6. Now simply click on the Arrow next to the class to launch the board and you are set to start teaching.

Managing Students’ Boards #

7. A teacher can manage their entire class’s boards. Clicking on Manage Board, if any students have joined that class, a teacher will be able to see their students boards as well.

8. Clicking on Show Class Boards will show students boards as shown below.

Managing Boards using List View #

9. The Manage Board also has a list view. You can click on the upper right corner hamburger style menu to switch to list view.

10. This is how the list view looks like.

List view has five columns:

1. Name – By clicking here you can directly change the name of the board
2. Participants for that board
3. Last Updated
4. Expires – When does the board expire. Note that by default, each board gets deleted after 3 days, unless the owner of the board has registered through Google. In that case, the board has a month’s life. 
5. Actions – Here you can join the board by clicking on the View or you can Delete the board by clicking on the trash icon.

     11. This is how the list view shows the students boards. Clicking on ‘-’ or ‘+’ signs will expand and show the students boards.

14. Downloading Boards as PDF #

1. Click on Download from the left side panel.
2. You have two options, download only the teacher’s board or download all students and group boards as a single PDF.

3. The board(or boards) will be downloaded as a single PDF and you can find it under your computer’s download folder.

Take a look at our FAQs on How to Teach a Live Class, and FAQs on How to Manage Boards After Class.