(upbeat music)
- [Zach] Hey there, guys.
Zach here for Windows Central,
and welcome back to another video.
Now, today we're taking a look at Microsoft Whiteboard.
This is an upcoming app from Microsoft
that's aimed at the education market
and is essentially a virtual whiteboard
that's pretty familiar to use.
So, as you can see, the UI is very approachable,
it's supposed to be sort of
something you understand from the get go.
Along the bottom here, you see that there's
a number of different pen options you can choose from,
as well as a virtual ruler that you can use.
Along the left here, we've got the option to zoom out,
undo, redo, and clear the Whiteboard,
and along the right, we have the option
to search the web and insert images from Bing,
do some magic with some graphs,
share the Whiteboard entirely,
and do some setting things
which you'll take a look at in a minute.
So the app itself, as I said, very approachable,
very clean UI, and you select a pen down here,
and you can begin inking away, so I can say,
hello, this is ink.
And of course this is on a surface device.
And considering it's a Whiteboard app,
you're likely going to be using this in an environment
where a whiteboard makes sense, such as a classroom,
so the app has a bunch of built-in skills that make
presenting a front of a Whiteboard somewhat easier,
so if I'm a teacher, for example,
I may be teaching a group of students
angles in a Maths class, so you're gonna be
wanting to draw shapes.
Now, usually, on a virtual whiteboard,
drawing shapes is somewhat difficult
because it's never accurate and things get smudged
and gross and you can never draw a steady line.
Of course, with the virtual ruler,
you can draw a steady line here,
so if we want to do an exact horizontal line here,
I can do that and now that line is horizontal.
Now, the app goes one further as well.
It also has a feature called ink to shape,
and what this does is attempt to recognize
the shape that I've tried to draw
and make it a perfect shape.
So if I draw a square here,
you'll see that corrected it to a perfect shape,
and now if I want to teach angles,
I can simply do that, and the app will show me the angles
of this device, and I can easily adjust them
if I really want to as well, which is fantastic,
so making and drawing shapes is pretty easy with this app,
and of course you can also see the angles
if you need to as well.
This also works with pretty much any shape,
so if I do a triangle here, you'll see that
that is a triangle, and I can quickly and easily
make this shape have a right angle by just doing that,
and that gives it a right angle, which is fantastic.
Let's try and draw some other shapes.
Let's try a parallelogram, hopefully it recognizes
that this is a parallelogram.
Yes, it did, that's fantastic.
So it works with pretty much any shape you can think of,
up until, I think, decagon, maybe less than decagon.
If you can draw a decagon, congratulations.
But yes, it does shape recognition pretty, pretty well.
The other great feature this app has is the ability
to quickly draw out a graph
without me having to actually draw the graph.
All I need to do is write the equation
and the app will do the rest for me.
Now, this is great as a teacher if you don't have time
to draw out an entire graph of numbers and lines
and whatever, this will simply do it for me.
So if I just quickly write out an equation here,
you'll see what I am talking about.
Plus four, and graph.
There we go, there's my equation,
and I can insert that into the Whiteboard.
And just like that, I've got an entire table,
with the lines, with the numbers,
and everything in between, very, very quickly.
I didn't have to spend time drawing out this Whiteboard
whilst the students in the class wait.
This did it all for me, and I can obviously add on
to this if I really want to and say,
ah, there's a line that can go down there, whatever.
Do all that good stuff.
So yes, that's a really handy feature as well.
Not only that, this app has the ability
to insert images from Bing
without actually having to leave the app.
So if you come down to the search icon here,
I can search for cat.
And then I can insert cat pictures
directly into the Whiteboard.
So there's a cat next to my graph, and I can say,
this is cat graph.
This is cat graph.
And there we go, I can now do some awesome things
with all the different pen colors we've got here,
I can even highlight some things,
like, yeah, there's the equation.
This equation equals cat.
Fantastic.
And of course, if you want to,
you can share this Whiteboard with friends
via the share button down here.
Not only that, this app also has the ability
to connect with other people,
whether they're in the same room or across the globe,
and ink together on the same virtual Whiteboard
at the same time.
So if you come up here, I can be doing my thing over here,
and as you can see in the corner over there,
you can see somebody else writing
on this very same Whiteboard,
and they can be doing their own equations,
and I can be doing my own equations,
and together we can teach, or we can brainstorm ideas,
without having to be in the same room,
which is absolutely fantastic.
So if I say, here's a circle,
it's got a word in it, and I can brainstorm over here,
they can also brainstorm over there as well,
so I can give them one of them,
and they can do their own thing,
which is fantastic, to say the least.
So there you have it guys,
that's a very quick look at the Microsoft Whiteboard app.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I shall see you in the next one.
Bye bye.