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Best Online Whiteboard for Teaching: How to Choose One
In this article
- What kinds of online whiteboards are there?
- Which criteria matter most for teaching?
- How do you test an online whiteboard in 30 minutes?
- How do criteria differ for tutoring, schools and corporate training?
- What are the red flags when choosing a digital whiteboard?
- Where does Educastic fit?
- Frequently asked questions
- Run your trial on Educastic
The best online whiteboard for teaching is the one that fits how you teach: natural handwriting, video and chat in the same window, per-student control over who can draw, live annotation of your own PDFs, recording, and a browser link students can open without installing anything. Test those six things in a 30-minute trial before you commit.
Most teachers pick a whiteboard after a quick look at a feature list, then discover the gaps in a live lesson with students waiting. Feature lists all look alike. What separates tools is how they behave when you are explaining a problem, a student is stuck, and the clock is running. This guide gives you the criteria, a trial plan and the warning signs, so you can choose with evidence instead of screenshots.
What kinds of online whiteboards are there?
Online whiteboards fall into three broad categories, and each was built for a different job:
- Collaboration canvases. Large shared boards designed for workshops and team planning. They are strong on sticky notes and diagrams, but usually need a separate video call and rarely offer classroom controls.
- Video-call built-in boards. The simple board inside a video meeting app. Convenient, but often limited in pens, backgrounds, file annotation and saving.
- Hardware interactive displays. Large touch screens in a physical classroom. Excellent in the room, but they do not by themselves give remote students a way to write.
A teaching whiteboard sits between these: a canvas with video, chat and classroom controls built around a lesson.
Which criteria matter most for teaching?
The criteria that matter most are the ones that affect a live lesson: writing, student participation, materials and what happens after class. Use this table as your checklist:
| Criterion | Why it matters for teaching | What to test in a trial |
|---|---|---|
| Handwriting feel | Students follow ideas built by hand far better than finished slides | Write a worked example with a tablet or mouse; check the lines are smooth and readable |
| Video and chat in one window | Switching apps mid-explanation loses students | Run a call with a colleague; see if video, chat and board share one screen |
| Per-student drawing control | You need students to write, but not all at once | Give one participant the pen, then take it back |
| Your own materials | You teach from worksheets and PDFs you already have | Upload a PDF and a Word file, then annotate a page |
| Subject tools | Math and science need grids, formulas and graphs | Switch the background and insert a formula |
| Recording | Absent students and revision depend on it | Record five minutes, then find and replay the file |
| Access for students | Every install step costs you a student | Join from a phone or tablet browser through the invite link |
| Language and devices | Your students may not share your language or device | Check the interface language and a touch screen |
How do you test an online whiteboard in 30 minutes?
Run a short mock lesson with a colleague or a friend as the student. Thirty minutes is enough to expose most problems:
- Minutes 0 to 5: join. Send the invite link and time how long your "student" takes to get in from a different device.
- Minutes 5 to 10: write. Teach a short worked example by hand on a grid background.
- Minutes 10 to 15: materials. Upload a PDF worksheet and annotate it while you talk.
- Minutes 15 to 20: participation. Give the student the pen, ask them to solve one problem, then remove access.
- Minutes 20 to 25: check understanding. Ask a question in chat or run a quick quiz if the tool has one.
- Minutes 25 to 30: after class. Stop the recording, save the board, and confirm you can find both later.
If any step needed a workaround, write it down. That workaround will happen in every lesson.
How do criteria differ for tutoring, schools and corporate training?
The core criteria stay the same, but the priorities shift with who you teach:
| Use case | Top priorities | Less important |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 tutoring | Handwriting, giving the student the pen, annotating homework, recording | Large group controls |
| School classes | Per-student controls, waiting room, quizzes, attendance reports | Advanced brushes |
| Corporate training | Uploading slides and documents, recording, attendance records, simple joining | Math and science tools |
For more on each setting, see our guides on an online whiteboard for schools and an online whiteboard for corporate training.
What are the red flags when choosing a digital whiteboard?
Walk away, or at least test harder, when you see any of these:
- Students must install an app before they can join, especially younger learners or guests.
- Everyone can draw at once with no way to give or take back access per student.
- Your files do not open without converting them yourself first.
- The board is a separate tool from the video call, so you juggle two windows all lesson.
- Nothing survives the class. No recording, no saved board, no way to send students the notes.
- Unclear what is free. If a feature you depend on is only described vaguely, ask before you plan lessons around it.
Where does Educastic fit?
Educastic is a teaching whiteboard: it is built for live lessons rather than team workshops, and it runs in the browser with nothing to install. Here is how it maps to the checklist:
- Writing: a wide range of pens, brushes, markers and pencils, plus Math Paper backgrounds (dots, graph, coordinate plane, isometric, ruled lines, blank).
- One window: Educastic includes built-in webcam video, chat and screen sharing beside the board.
- Control: the Educastic teacher can give or take back Whiteboard Tools Access (drawing) per student at any time, and guests wait in a waiting room until admitted.
- Materials: upload PDFs and annotate them live; Word and other documents convert to PDF on upload. Files can also come from Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive.
- Subjects: a math formula tool, a scientific calculator and graphing through a Desmos integration.
- After class: recording, in-class quizzes, and attendance and session reports.
- Access: the interface is in English and Spanish, and it works on laptops, tablets and touch screens in the browser. It has been tested with up to 49 attendees in one session.
Educastic is not a native mobile app, and if your main need is a large brainstorming canvas for a company team, a collaboration canvas may suit you better.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best online whiteboard for online tutoring?
The best one lets you write naturally, hand the student the pen and take it back, annotate their homework and record the session. Test those four in a mock lesson before choosing.
Do I need a drawing tablet to use an online whiteboard?
No, but it helps. A mouse is fine for text and diagrams, while a tablet or touch screen with a stylus makes handwriting and math much easier.
Is a free online whiteboard good enough for teaching?
It can be, if the free version includes the features you teach with. Educastic includes all of its teaching features in the free version.
How long should I trial a whiteboard before choosing?
About 30 minutes of mock teaching covers the essentials, followed by one real lesson with a student.
Run your trial on Educastic
Take the checklist above into a 30-minute mock lesson on the Educastic online whiteboard and see how each criterion holds up with a real student on the other side.
