The best whiteboard app for teaching depends on where the lesson happens: in the room, live online, or recorded for later. For a free class display with timers and polls, use Classroomscreen. For live online tutoring, try Bitpaper or Limnu. For recorded explainers, look at Explain Everything or Educreations.
What do you need the board to do that a pen can't?
Ask yourself that before you download anything. If the answer is "let thirty pupils write at once and let me see every answer", you need a very different app from a tutor who wants to share a board on a video call, or a teacher who records a two-minute explainer for homework. Teaching whiteboards split along those three jobs, and the best app for one is often clumsy at the others.
The quickest way to find out which you need is to rehearse a real lesson in a free account. It takes under an hour and tells you more than any feature list.
Rehearse one lesson before you choose
- Pick a lesson you're teaching next week. Say, solving 3x + 5 = 20 in four steps, ending with x = 5.
- Build it. Three frames or slides: the problem, the worked steps, a practice question. Add one diagram and one image. Notice how long the image upload takes.
- Join as a student. Open the board on your phone in a private browser window. Can you get in from a link or code without making an account? How many taps did it take?
- Ask for an answer. As the student, write your answer to the practice question. As the teacher, check you can see it, and that other students can't if you're using it to check understanding.
- Record two minutes. Talk through the worked steps while you annotate, export it, and play it back on the phone. Is the handwriting legible and the sound clear?
- Come back tomorrow. Is the board where you left it, and can you copy it for next year's class in one go?
Any step that needed a workaround tells you something. If step three made you sign up, it'll be worse with a class of eleven-year-olds who've forgotten their passwords. If step five isn't possible at all, you've found a live-lesson tool, which is fine, as long as you know.
The choices that matter in a classroom
In the room or on a call. A board on the classroom screen is a display: timers, noise meters, group makers and somewhere to write. A board for online lessons has to carry the whole lesson, so drawing, sharing and often video sit together. If you teach online, our guide to using the Zoom whiteboard is worth reading before you pay for anything, because you might already have enough.
Accounts or no accounts. For younger pupils, joining with a link or code beats any feature. One big collaborative whiteboard has a lighter version that teachers and tutors can share without anyone signing up. Check this first if your school restricts student logins.
Live or recorded. Some apps are built to record you explaining on the board and turn it into a video. Others only exist in the moment. Flipped classrooms, homework explainers and absent pupils all point to the recording kind.
Your plan or the school's. Some of these tools bill per member, so boards for a whole department cost more than boards for one teacher. If your department wants shared boards, decide which way you're buying before anyone falls in love with an app.
For the lesson in the room
Classroomscreen
A classroom display rather than a drawing canvas: timers, group makers, polls and other widgets, plus an annotation bar for writing over it.
Whiteboard.fi
Built for teachers checking understanding mid-lesson, this online whiteboard is pitched squarely at formative assessment.
Padlet
Students and teachers post onto shared boards and canvases here, which suits brainstorms, exit tickets and visual group work.
For tutoring and recorded lessons
Bitpaper
Tutors get an online whiteboard with video calls and screen sharing built in, so there's no separate call app to juggle.
Limnu
An online whiteboard that sells to individual tutors, classroom teachers and whole schools alike, with a version aimed at educators.
Twiddla
For marking up a website, graphic or photo live with a student, this classroom whiteboard adds voice and text chat.
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Miro
A large collaborative whiteboard whose lighter, no-signup version lets teachers and tutors share a board with students.
Explain Everything
Teachers who record video tutorials or build interactive presentations will find this whiteboard is designed around exactly that.
Educreations
Interactive whiteboard and screencasting tool for annotating, animating and narrating a lesson so students can replay it.
What it costs a teacher
On the vendors' own pricing pages this month, five of the nine apps here have a free plan, three offer a free trial instead, and one doesn't state either on the pages read. The cheapest paid teacher plan costs a few dollars a month, billed for the year. Team plans for tutors and schools are priced per member, and an individual tutoring plan costs more than a teacher's classroom plan; one tutoring app's company plan is several times higher again.
Free plans differ in where the wall is. One classroom display app puts all 26 of its widgets on the free plan and keeps a paid Pro plan for more. One recording app's free plan stops at three projects, one slide per project and three-minute videos, which is a trial in all but name. Run the rehearsal above on the free plan and you'll hit the wall, if there is one, before you've paid anything.
Do you make whiteboard apps or teaching tools? Tool makers can ask to be considered for a featured place on this list.
Mistakes that cost a term
The most common one is choosing an office whiteboard because the staff room already uses it. Business boards tend to assume adults with their own accounts and big screens. A Year 4 class on shared tablets needs big buttons, a join code and a teacher who can lock the board. Pick for the pupils, not the meeting.
The second is building a term's lessons in an app before checking you can get them out again. If your school changes platform next September, can you export the boards as PDFs or images? If not, you've rented your resources. The third is ignoring the handwriting. A board that's lovely with a stylus can be painful with a mouse or a finger, so test it with whatever you'll have in front of the class.
The last is trying to make one app do everything. Many teachers end up with a classroom display for the room and a separate tool for recording, and that's fine. Our wider list of apps for teachers covers the rest of the kit that sits around a whiteboard.
So which type should you pick?
If you teach a full class in a room, start with a free classroom display app and add a formative-assessment board when you want to see every pupil's working. If you tutor online one to one, you want a whiteboard with calls and screen sharing built in, on an individual plan. If you record lessons for homework or absent pupils, pick a recording-first app and check its free plan limits before you build a term's worth of videos. And if your whole department will share boards, run the rehearsal together and buy the team plan once, rather than five teachers buying five different apps.
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