In this video I'm going to show you how to use a free digital whiteboard program
called Whiteboard.fi. If you're a teacher who uses physical whiteboards in your classroom as a way
for students to respond to questions, then you're definitely going to like this program because it
essentially replicates that experience in a digital environment. And Whiteboard.fi
also has some features that make it a really effective educational tool. So for example you
can do things like fix a background and then have students write directly on top of that background,
you can push your teacher whiteboard out to individual student whiteboards,
you can wipe all whiteboards at the same time, and there are also lots of different ways
that you and your students can interact with the whiteboard such as using drawing tools, text tools,
and even adding math language. So I definitely think that this program has a place in your
teacher toolkit. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube channel for The New EdTech
Classroom.
As always if you appreciate the tips that I share in this video, you can show your support by hitting
the like button, subscribing to my channel, and hitting the notification bell to make sure you
don't miss any of my weekly video updates. So let's jump in now and take a look at Whiteboard.fi. All
right to start I'm going to go to Whiteboard.fi. Students don't need accounts to use this program
and it's also not going to store your data or your students' data in the program, so every time you use
the program you're going to set up a new class and a new whiteboard. I'll show you later how to
download work so that you can keep it for future reference if you want. So first I'm going to go
here to 'New Class.' Then I'll start by giving my class a name and then below you'll see that you
have an option to enable a waiting room and you would have to approve them before they would be
able to get into your whiteboard. I would recommend that you set up the waiting room so I'm going to
go ahead and check this box. Enabling manual save mode will disable the auto save function
and set it up so that students would have to manually save their work. You might want to
consider checking this box if your students have limited connectivity because it's going to make
the program run a little bit faster. Then when I'm ready to get started, I'll go down here to 'Create
New Class.' And if you ever want to access the settings again you can also just go up here to
the settings cog and that will allow you to change those settings as well. So now on this split screen
I'm going to pull up a student account and just enter the direct link so that students can get
right into the whiteboard. You'll see that the first thing that it does is prompt the student to
enter their name and then they can select to join the class after they've clicked to join the class.
Since I enabled the wait room, it will put them in the lobby and then on the teacher end I'll see
that a student has come in and I can choose whether or not to allow that student to come
into the class or whether or not to kick them out. So the only reason I would choose to use the kick
function here is if I didn't recognize a student name, just for privacy issues. And now you'll see
that once the student has been allowed in the room a personal whiteboard has popped up on their side
and I can also see that student whiteboard on my end as well. And as we repeat this process with
more students you'll continue to see additional student whiteboards show up in your room. So now
let's look at how the program works. First on the student end you'll see that there's an option for
them to toggle the teacher whiteboard. If they don't click this button they'll only ever be
able to see their whiteboard, which you can see here below. So you'll notice that as I'm writing
on my teacher board the student isn't going to see anything on their end until they hit
that toggle teacher whiteboard button. So the first tool here is a typical digital pen tool that you
can use to write directly onto the board. And then with this next tool you can also create your own
custom shapes. There are pre-made shapes as well, so this one will give you a square, and this one would
drop in a circle. This text tool will allow you and your students to type directly onto the whiteboard
and then that text can be resized and dragged around wherever you want it to go. Next you also
have an option to bring an image onto the board, so here if you select an image from your computer,
you can bring that image in, resize it, drag it around, and put it wherever you want it to go. The
next two tools are copy and paste tools, so that's just going to allow you to essentially duplicate
anything that you already have created on the board. And then there's a zoom in and zoom out tool
as well as a realign tool that will reset it to the way it was originally set up. If you click
on 'Download,' that will allow you to download what you had just created as either an image or a PDF
file. And then with the bring forward and move back tools you can also change the way the layering is
set up on your board. So for example you could send this rectangle back so that the circle is in front
of it. Then underneath the drawing tool you'll also see that there are lots of different options
for colors for the digital pen and you can also change the pen thickness. And then you'll see that
there's also an eraser tool that would allow you to erase what you had just written on the board.
This next flatten image tool is really useful. So if you choose to flatten the image it's going
to take everything that you just created and set it up as the background. So by choosing this tool
it will effectively set it up as a static uneditable background that you can write directly
on top of. You'll also see that you have the ability to set up the background as graph paper.
Then you can also use the math equation editor in order to bring in different math equations. So here
I can create a fraction by hitting 2 backslash 5 and then you can also create exponents by
using the carrot button. One of the things I like most about this program is the ability to set a
background and then be able to write directly on top of it. As I showed before, one option is that
you could use the flatten image tool in order to create a fixed background. Another choice would be
that you could create an image in another program. So here for example I created a graphic organizer
in Google Slides and I'm just going to add that as an image to Whiteboard.fi. So let's say that we
were doing a lesson about digital citizenship and I wanted my students to just do a preview activity,
determining what they would hear, see, or feel if someone was practicing digital citizenship.
Now that I have my graphic organizer, I'm going to want to model for students
and here I'll want to make sure that they're able to actually see what I'm doing on my whiteboard, so
it's going to be important that I prompt students to click the 'Toggle Teacher Whiteboard' button so
that they're actually able to see what I'm doing. On my whiteboard then what I can do is add some
text here. So for example I might say that when I think of someone practicing digital citizenship,
that makes me feel respected. You'll notice that when I start filling out my teacher whiteboard,
it's going to show up on the student end as well. Now let's say that after I've modeled I also want
students to be able to fill in this same graphic organizer as well. What I can do is go up here
to the 'Push' button, then I can choose to push my whiteboard as a background to student whiteboards.
Once I do this you'll see that that graphic organizer, as well as my example, shows up directly
on the student whiteboards. Then students can add their own responses. So for example a student might
add their own text to say that what they see when someone is practicing digital citizenship
are kind words. You'll also notice that as students are writing on their boards I can see their
answers coming in live when I scroll down to look at all the student whiteboards. I can also click
on a student's whiteboard to get a closer look at what they're doing. And if I like that answer and
want to be able to show it to the rest of the class, I can go to the 'Actions' drop down menu
and choose to push the student's response out to the teacher whiteboard. So you'll notice that
once I do that, now that student's answer is going to show up on the teacher whiteboard for everyone
else to see as well. Then if another student has an answer that I also want to show up on the
teacher whiteboard I can choose to push their answer back to the teacher whiteboard as well,
but notice that when I do that, it's going to erase the other student's response and only push that
new student answer to the board. If you wanted to show all student responses at the same time,
your only choice is going to be to share your teacher screen and if you do this, but want to
keep student responses anonymous, you might want to select to hide student names from each of the
boards. So let's say we're done with this activity but I'd like to save all of the responses so that
I can post them on a place like Google Classroom later for everyone to review. I can choose to go
up here to the settings cog and then download all the whiteboards as a PDF file. Then if you're
ready to move on to a different activity you can choose to clear all student whiteboards so that
all the whiteboards are cleaned and you can start over again with something new. I really appreciate
how useful Whiteboard.fi is and if you have any questions or ideas about how to use it with your
students, I'd love for you to put those in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching
my video to the end. If you found the tips that I shared helpful, please share it with other teachers
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sure you don't miss any of my weekly updates. You can also check out some of the other tutorials I
have on my channel by clicking on one of those two videos above and if you're interested in
downloading any of the resources that I've created and show on my videos please visit my website at
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Thanks so much and have a great week!