Free online whiteboard for teaching: how to use it in class and online

What an online whiteboard is and what this one does

An online whiteboard is a blank canvas in the browser that you fill with shapes, lines, words and pictures, and that you can move around, zoom and change at any moment. Unlike chalk, nothing has to be wiped away to make room: you pan to an empty area and keep going. The VITON13 SCHOOL board is built on Excalidraw, an open-source whiteboard published under the MIT licence, and its interface is available in English, Russian, Spanish and French.

The toolbar holds rectangles, diamonds, ellipses, arrows, lines, a pencil for freehand drawing, text, images and an eraser. There is also a laser pointer for showing where to look, and frames for grouping part of the board into a slide-like area. Shapes have a hand-drawn look by default, and you can change colours, stroke width and fill. Zoom and pan, dark mode, keyboard shortcuts and undo/redo are all there, so a mistake costs one click.

Where does the work go? The board saves your drawing automatically in this browser, on this device. That is convenient, but clearing browser data deletes it, and the same board will not appear on another computer. To keep a copy, export the board as a PNG or SVG picture, or save it as an .excalidraw file that you can open again later. Be clear about one limit: several people drawing on the same board at once is not part of this page.

[1]

How to use a whiteboard for teaching, step by step

Before the lesson, open the board and prepare the skeleton: a title, empty frames for each stage of the lesson and any picture you plan to talk about. In the classroom, connect the computer to the projector or interactive panel and press the full-screen button, so the board fills the screen the class is watching.

While you explain, build the idea in front of the students rather than showing a finished slide. Put each step in its own frame, link causes to results with arrows, and write short labels next to shapes instead of long sentences. When you need the room to look at one detail, switch to the laser pointer, which points at it without changing the drawing.

At the end of the lesson, save the board. Export a PNG if students only need a picture to revise from, an SVG if you want a sharp image for printing, or an .excalidraw file if you plan to return to the same board next week. Send the picture or file to the class through whatever channel you already use for homework.

For remote lessons, start a video call and share your screen with the board open; students follow every line as you draw it. If you want a student to draw, send them the .excalidraw file, ask them to open it on their own device, add their part and send it back. That is the honest way to work together here, because live co-drawing is not on this page.

Why drawing helps learning

Drawing is more than decoration. In a 2016 paper on what they called the drawing effect, Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade and Myra Fernandes compared ways of memorising words. Drawing a word’s meaning led to better recall than writing the word out repeatedly.

A review by Logan Fiorella and Richard Mayer, published the same year, describes eight ways to promote generative learning, in which learners make sense of material for themselves. Drawing, mapping and explaining are among the activities that help learners build understanding. The review adds an important condition: drawing works best when learners get guidance on what to draw.

In practice, that guidance is the teacher’s job. “Draw the water cycle” is vague; “draw three boxes for evaporation, condensation and precipitation and connect them with arrows” tells students exactly what to show. Name the parts and the relations to mark, and sometimes leave a blank template on the board for them to complete. Neither study tested this particular board, so treat them as reasons to draw, not as promises about any app.

Lesson ideas by subject

In maths, draw a number line, split a rectangle into fractions or sketch a graph and move one point to show what changes. In science, build a labelled diagram, such as a food chain or a simple circuit, one arrow at a time, and ask students to name each part before you write it. In languages, put a word in the centre and grow a vocabulary map around it: synonyms on one side, opposites on the other, example phrases underneath.

In history, draw a long horizontal line, add frames for periods and attach events with arrows, so students see both order and distance in time. For a group project, turn frames into stages and write the tasks, names and deadlines inside them; the exported picture becomes the plan everyone keeps. Parents homeschooling can use the same board on a tablet at the kitchen table, and students can revise on their own by redrawing a topic from memory.

The board works the same way in a school classroom, a college seminar, a university lecture or an online school, and trying it costs nothing. Open the VITON13 SCHOOL free online whiteboard, press full screen and draw the first idea of your next lesson.

[2][3]

• Free online whiteboard ↗
• Reading speed test ↗

In everyday language

An online whiteboard is a classroom board that lives in your browser: you draw on it as on a wall, but you can zoom, undo and take the whole board home as a file.

Related lessons

• Average reading speed: what the numbers mean and how to read faster ↗
• Random name picker: how to pick students and make teams fairly ↗