The interactive whiteboard (the big, bulky one) has been considered standard equipment in schools for some time. It was reported that in 2007, 100% of surveyed Primary schools throughout England had access to at least one Interactive Whiteboard.

Reasons for this can be found in the digital interactivity they provide. As well as feeling natural as a substitute for the chalk and blackboard combo teachers had grown accustomed to.

Recently, discussions around interactive whiteboards drove them to the point of contention. Some teachers felt their prices and maintenance costs were not worth the payoff. Some say it’s the inevitability of teachers being glued to the front of the classroom with their backs to their students. Others think it’s all about how you use them. You can take a look at this tweet to get a glimpse of the situation.

Data coming in from the use of interactive whiteboards shows why the problem exists and what schools can do with it.

Are smart boards effective?

We need to give the devil his due. A large-scale survey conducted in 2016 by a team of the Canada Research Chair in Technologies in Education stated very clearly that “The more that students work with the IWB, the more positive their perceptions of its impacts on their academic achievement, school motivation, and overall satisfaction at school.”

However, the surrounding circumstances were not as positive. They acknowledged that many studies around digital whiteboards are biased because they were sponsored by their manufacturers and “few serious studies have shown any impacts of the IWB on academic achievement.”

Data gathered in the study has also shown that teachers used interactive whiteboards primarily as a digital projector. The core issue was found in student engagement, as only 4% of teachers were encouraging their students to use the whiteboard. Please keep in mind, this was a survey involving over a thousand teachers who had access to them.

The question is, how were they meant to do that with a group of students anyway? There was no way to let every student use the only available whiteboard in a single lesson’s timeframe.

Facing the challenges of a smart board

Interactive whiteboard manufacturers have tried to tackle these problems. Some have allowed multiple people to use the whiteboard at the same time.

Even if implemented properly, this isn’t a perfect solution. It still involves a piece of bulky hardware that the classroom revolves around and stands in contrast to the trend of student-centered learning that seems to be shaping the current educational landscape.

It would seem that the only option is to provide interactive whiteboard access to every student. As examples have shown, that’s just not realistic with a single device. There are ways students can connect to interactive whiteboards with their own devices, but that requires additional preparation and adds to the complexity. Either way, students wouldn’t be able to work individually at the same time.

The problem of hardware fragmentation isn’t something to neglect either. Not every school or district is able to provide devices for their staff and students. Creating a device-agnostic, cohesive, non-exclusive learning environment in BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) classes seems overly complicated when having to deal with system-specific differences and formats.

The situation may look dire but it allows us to point out the qualities required for the best smart board alternative to achieve the goals of modern classrooms.

The key qualities of a student-centered interactive whiteboard

At Explain Everything, we’ve been working with teachers for the past eight years, gathering data and working on solutions that serve the student-centered classroom. We’ve made it our mission to solve these problems and have outlined the crucial traits of a modern interactive whiteboard.

To allow all kinds of workflows and curriculums, an interactive whiteboard needs to be universal. This means providing support for all file types teachers and students may use during a lesson and a wide set of easy-to-use creative tools. The ability to share creations as videos is also crucial, for both the teacher and the students, in media-rich classroom projects and teacher-made explainer videos.

The best smart board alternative also needs to be device-agnostic, allowing easy access from all possible devices and from the web.

Regardless of if you’re running a GSuite or your school is strictly Apple-focused, your interactive whiteboard needs to support the integrations you want. This should also involve MDM and integration with your LMS so it’s easy to set up.

In order to shift the perspective from the board in the center of the classroom to being in front of each student, they need to be personal and allow for seamless collaboration when necessary. This will also relieve the teacher of being stuck in front of the classroom and enable them to focus on providing help directly to students that need it.

We believe it is the duty of the next generation of whiteboards to overcome these obstacles on their way towards building greater knowledge, not to create something which propagates them. We’ve built what we and many teachers around the world consider the best smartboard alternative. You don’t have to take our word for it. You can try it for free, right now, or learn more about how Explain Everything can help you as it has helped others.

Originally published at https://explaineverything.com on July 10, 2019.

The perfect smart board alternative in the era of student-centered learning was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When learning about software, do you prefer using a video tutorial (YouTube-style), or well-written text instructions?

There are positive aspects to both mediums. A video is excellent in illustrating how to navigate a software’s interface. Text, on the other hand, provides the advantage of searchability and also makes it easy to take in instructions step by step. Anyone that has tried to create a knowledge repository is familiar with the struggle of deciding which medium is best to use.

We at Explain Everything have recently been going through the process of creating a knowledge repository in the form of a help center. We were in the same boat in deciding how best to go about creating our help center. Video? Text? In the end we went for mixing both communication forms, text and animated videos. And only after using our tool for the job did we learn that we have an interesting perspective to share.

Ways of sharing knowledge

Building a successful help center or knowledge repository is an exercise in empathy considering the user’s needs of getting their job done. After all, you’re not delving into a support section without a cause.

Users are motivated either with a desire to learn about a product before their buying decision or resolving issues when using it. That’s why on the one hand we wanted to satisfy those looking for in-depth answers, and on the other — make it easy for newcomers to find big picture information.

It was clear to us that the right formula has to do with a mix of illustrative videos and text. Luckily our platform is about knowledge exchange, so we genuinely used it to the fullest extent.

Consider what the process of producing animated videos entailed in the past. Scripting and then producing animation was a cumbersome and lengthy process taking days if not weeks to finish. And what’s more the process had to be redone with every change to your product interface. Updating a text article is easy. Updating videos was a pain.

Explain everything with Explain Everything

We created Explain Everything on the presumption that video animation should be as smooth as moving objects across the screen with a finger. Fast forward seven years and this idea resulted in an interactive whiteboard platform used by over 10 million users that share their knowledge visually by recording videos without a need of a script or studio.

A tablet makes it easy to capture what users show and tell. And once knowledge is captured, it can be repurposed easily as the recording process does not work like a video. A camera would capture a sequence of frames that are difficult to manipulate if one doesn’t have post-production skills or equipment. Instead, Explain Everything records object manipulation as it happens as well as audio. That way it is easy to iterate and improve once recorded, replacing elements or adjusting animations when needed.

The way Explain Everything’s recording features works makes it super easy to document any software. To demonstrate how a piece of software works all one needs to do is to screen grab the process of using it, put the recording into Explain Everything and explain the video using any means of expression available. For our Help Center videos, we decided to use a header title, employ subtitles under the video, and add minimal, subtle animation or highlights for attention.

The feedback we received after producing the first explanatory videos was of two kinds. Appraisal of clarity and authenticity on the one hand and a surprise that the result hasn’t been pixel-perfect. But should it?

Immediacy and its results

Any software company could procure the creation of ideal animations. A software company advocating authentic just-in-time communication shouldn’t. By watching videos embedded in our support articles you’re getting a taste what you can create not as an animator, but as an individual that has something to convey.

The software tutorial is not meant for animated feature film awards. It is a way to source the knowledge directly from a person who knows something to those that want to learn. Authenticity comes with immediacy. With Explain Everything we strive to shrink the distance between those that know and those that want to learn.

Happy learning!

Originally published at explaineverything.com on March 14, 2019.

Building a multimedia knowledge repository was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The entire development of a higher culture is basically a transformation of work into play — as Alan Watts famously puts it, “It’s about bringing delight into everything that is done.” How stark a contrast if we apply this line of reasoning to business software! Yet, at least one area of professional endeavor exists that actually requires a capacity for playfulness, spontaneity and joy. It is the creative process of coming up with ideas.

“We use simple signs to communicate the message, but when we discover how beautiful it is to draw a message — the work becomes play.”

Most of us abandon visual communication at an early age and exchange it for numbers and written language. We expect visuals in architecture or engineering, but don’t make any connections between the visual language and critical thinking, or problem solving, or innovation. The tools that support visual literacy span across different categories, like notepads, scratchpads, or interactive whiteboards, each category seen as more applicable to education than to business. And it makes sense, observing how education serves both the verbal and visual need of language acquisition. Around the age of 8, focus on the verbal begins to outweigh the visual. Sunni Brown in her book “The Doodle Revolution” suggests that our innate capacity for visual language is lost in this process to the supposedly “real” tools, dominated by words and numbers. In the process, taught symbols replace the capability to generate visual language. Yet we cling to visual doodling or sketching when necessary.

Patterns of System Thinking visualized

In reality most disciplines in business and management call for visual skills. Such as the skill for sharing vision with the purpose to portrait the future and foster genuine commitment in result. When looking forward we’re often using illustrations, pictures and graphs. After all, the very word ‘vision’ implies the state of seeing. The opposite process takes place in legal or compliance departments, that look to ensure obedience instead of inspiration. In result all regulations and zero-tolerance rules are shared as clean, sanitized text documents.

Creating and sharing ideas by using visuals is also helpful in other business areas, such as working with ingrained assumptions and generalizations called “Mental Models”, which represent how we understand the world. These are often already represented by pictures, diagrams or flowcharts. As good as tools for creating diagrams are, they fail to support exploration of more complex human actions. In effect, sketching on a napkin prevails over its digital counterparts.

There is no software category to combine modes of operating helpful to deal with visual exchange of ideas. When providing software support we’re stretched between communicators, whiteboards, video editors and knowledge repositories.The best we can do as of yet is to label the area by the tag words ‘divergent thinking,’ using the term coined by J.P. Guilford, an early researcher of creativity.

A missing software category

An american psychologist, Joy Paul Guilford, was trying to create a model for intellect in the fifties, but in doing so also created a model for creativity. He came out of the process with one-hundred and eighty different mental tasks, and by identifying vital components of creativity he managed to label them as ‘divergent thinking.’ There are twenty-four of them. These thought processes allow one to explore many possible solutions in a spontaneous, free-flowing, non-linear manner. They are often used in conjunction with their cognitive counterpart — convergent thinking, which employs logical steps to arrive at one “correct” solution. Divergent and convergent thinking are often used together as two parts of the whole.

This can be seen in the ‘double diamond’ process introduced by The Design Council. This process maps the divergent and convergent stages of using different modes of thinking. What is common is that divergent thought initiates and opens new possibilities in order to then apply logic and scrutiny to narrow and refine the scope. Yet the objective of the ‘divergent’ is to keep one’s perspectives wide to allow for a broad range of ideas and influences. LEGO refers to this stage of the process as ‘Exploring,’ Microsoft calls it ‘Understand,’ while Starbucks has coined the term ‘Concept Heights.’ None of these companies used catalog of Computer-Aided Divergent Thinking software to choose their tools!

The software supporting this mode of operation is misrepresented. The current best options for the business application of software-supported tinkering have more to do with video conferencing and knowledge repositories instead of a digital alternative to the napkin. Yet those very tools currently support team learning, a process where we’re meant to “think together” and discover insights not attainable individually. It seems clear that the process is less about group conversation or categorizing articles. It’s more about providing a means to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine process of the expression of ideas — by visual or other (any) means.

Why the predominance of the narrow instead of the open-ended?

The reason why software largely supports convergent instead divergent thinking goes back to the mathematical rigidness making up the foundation of all digital tools. So far, any logic-driven accumulation of rules works well. Anything loose, fuzzy, and outside the logic or the reality of math was out. This lack of space for ambiguity initially made it possible to produce software to support processes composed of known parts, rather than of those yet to be defined. Although it’s hard to model unconstrained concepts using a rigid stack of technologies, it is still not impossible! Since the fifties brave attempts made it possible to pave the way to our current set of machine learning technologies which can successfully escape the rigidness of the classical algorithmic foundation. They do that by the use of a set of solutions designed to address problems where no clear direction is provided. And if we stretch our imagination, as some believe, we may eventually arrive at a less-messy artificial reasoner capable of making order out of our mess. But even if we do, how would you want to have clues and suggestions provided to you by this hypothetical artificial reasoner? As a single logical narrative? Or would you prefer to take suggestions from digital overlords as lists of options for the sake of better understanding?

It seems there’s no escape from the divergent and it leads us again to tools for the exploration and communication of ideas, no matter where those ideas originate. The good news is that clues for business exist in the education sector.

What can Education teach Business?

Strong support for visual literacy is provided before school begins, as those skills are learned before our first exposure to written text as they are understood as advantageous to children’s comprehension and cognitive abilities. Drawing is not only used as a teaching device, it also provides a means of orchestrating a conversation with yourself. Putting thoughts down allows students to step outside of themselves and tap into our visual system to see and understand relations. We thus expand our thinking by distributing it between conception and perception, engaging both simultaneously. We draw not to transcribe ideas from our heads but to organize them in search of greater understanding. And understanding is what education is all about. The use of the visual is still supported by the deployments of devices and tablets equipped with whiteboard software. We experience this first hand by providing one of these solutions, the Explain Everything platform. The same trend has recently been supported by Microsoft with their interactive whiteboard for Education. Inherently, visual processes that support differentiation and drawing connections are helpful also beyond education.

Divergent Thinking in Business

The areas supported by software in business revolve mostly around planning and execution. The end-result of both processes is to narrow available options. The more narrowing the result, the more convergent modes of thinking are required. Good decisions, however, require multiple inputs. Also, many workshops and nearly all business meetings with new prospects provide an opportunity to explore or learn; Due to their nature, divergent thinking is the way to proceed. Therefore, multiple views, not just a single view, are more helpful. The perception of a business opportunity or a singular solution to a complex problem can be constructed from a multitude of views. Yet to postpone judgement and gather different opinions requires the open-ended, the joyful, the divergent. Anchoring our viewpoint would interrupt the dynamic of relations between participants.

This process of reunited thinking, the playful and the visual into one mode of operation that is divergent by nature. The process is supported by notepads, mindmaps, whiteboards and communicators. We already use tools that go beyond text and incorporate not only emoticons but also other novel means of expression. The innovation that already happens in business software is fragmented for anyone that might expect a complete package to support divergent-thinking. However, as Robert Green puts it — creativity is in the mud, the dirt, and the grime of daily life. When we introduced our whiteboard to business to support the creatives, we followed the need, not a finished list of expectations. The variety of these is what can be coined as the definition of a new software category. My guess is that future divergent-thinking aids will be a crossroads of collaborative communicators, interactive whiteboards and repositories designed to hold visually expressed knowledge, provided both by audio and video. This might influence or merge with core resource planning systems and become a layer of communication enhancing their adoption and usefulness. What we experienced when introducing an EDU-originated interactive whiteboard to enterprises is the unconstrained collaborative setting that can also be fun for business oriented customers. The first thing most participants did after recognizing their lack of constraints was to play. The second thing they noticed is that it’s easier to create meaning when barriers of expression are taken down.

The early adopters in business are the ones responsible for inside training, sales enablement or customer success departments, where the need to improve communication is most obvious. The need for new software support is already recognized by the professionals that understand innovative methodologies well. Meeting some of them might already be a future shock. Such as when Pierre-Denis Autric, Culture Hacker at CapGemini, entered a meeting supplied with a set of iPads and a simple goal to immerse participants in the digital experience of the collaborative whiteboard instead of using flipcharts.

Using joy as a means to increase efficiency seems the right way for playfulness to be acknowledged as an important factor in enterprise. After all, it is a way to make our work more rewarding. When Alan Watts spoke of the transformation of work into play, he surely had no software in mind. Yet software is precisely were his vision can be achieved. It’s already transformed entertainment. However, the successful transformation of business could have a far more powerful impact for several reasons. Not only could the perception of business change but also, due to the more exuberant nature of meetings — more meaning can be generated. By allowing for more visual means for expression, we might find more creatives in our teams that have perhaps been muted by the textual, and who know how to draw a message well and, by that method, connect with a fresh dose of authenticity. And finally, if what we do makes more sense, it will, in the long run, benefit the organizations we work for. Perception, in the end, is not mere decoration but an integral and fundamental partner in making meaning.

Why Business Software is Pushing for Playfulness was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is a guest article written by Bartosz Gonczarek, one of Explain Everything’s co-founders and COO.

Using tablet devices for learning continues to be a matter of dispute. The discussion usually is usually centered around devices, leaving software as an afterthought. The continuous innovation on a software level will certainly influence the end result of that dispute. Let me come clean here: I’m biased, as I’ve co-created the software that I’ll put forward here as an argument for the utility of tablets. But this fact gives me a unique and fresh perspective on what’s possible. And since I’m one of the benefactors of the accelerated ways one can learn, I’m inclined to hint at what is possible for the general audience.

Showing new possibilities is sometimes difficult. Martin Luther learned it the hard way when he was almost put to death after he arrived in London with a set of printed bibles. His invention wasn’t understood at all as it took a lifetime to copy just two books at that time; therefore a logical conclusion was that only the devil was capable of copying texts as precisely and as fast as he did.

Fast forward to 2018. We are faced with a less severe version of the same problem — advocating scribbling on a tablet in opposition to mechanical typing. Although type font and texts are great, the learning process benefits from creating written notes. For the last 400 years, typing has remained a useful invention. An individual that had something to teach others could pass his message to millions in the form of texts. This novel, at the time, form of communicating removed barriers of distance but imposed new ones, for instance, the book couldn’t transmit the emotions associated with it. The technology wasn’t ready at a time to carry more than text. And so computers arrived, offering some novel ways of interacting with information, such as emoticons enriching text with emotional context. Still, the set of new possibilities of digital devices can be seen as a new artificial barrier for learning if not used according to our innate learning habits. How to choose the right forms of digitally supported human-to-human interaction which benefit the learning process?

The ‘cutting edge’ of learning Spanish

Here’s an example of how a foreign language can be taught and learned with the use of technology without sacrificing the authenticity and intuitiveness of our pre-computer skills. The case I use below might be applicable to those intensively working people who try to learn new things outside the proper classroom setting, acknowledging that learning happens during FaceTime sessions with our tutors and in between them: on the run, during wait time, in all places where we’re accompanied by our mobile devices.

The Explain Everything platform makes it possible to meet the expectations of modern learners. When learning languages one might want to accomplish two things — (I) keep a manageable record of all sessions with a native speaker and (II) make notes that could be used on the fly to revisit learned things. Above all, simplicity should be an overarching goal — to work similarly as one would on a single sheet of paper. However, thanks to the tablet, there are extended possibilities using a piece of software.

With these goals in mind here’s an illustration of how I use Explain Everything for practicing the Spanish language. During one-to-one lessons with my tutor, we’ve tried various hardware setups. We’ve used a single tablet that we shared. We’ve also tried two tablets set in collaborative mode. We eventually agreed that the configuration of two iPad Pros with pencils is the one that most resembles working with traditional tools.

The way I like to learn Spanish might be considered peculiar. We work using chapters of a Spanish book, keeping notes on difficulties and discussions during each lesson.

To get us started we create a cloud whiteboarding session.I add a screenshot of the page containing highlighted areas where I need the support of my tutor. Each of us uses his tablet to view the contents using their own perspective (we’re using the ‘ninja zoom’ feature for that), so even when I make my notes next to a page my tutor can focus on the book’s text without interfering with my notes.

Each important new thing I learn is enhanced by a short recording, that I do on the fly. Often these recordings help me to get the pronunciation right. I ask my tutor to read the sentence or correct me if I do the reading myself. When recording I turn ‘ninja zoom’ off so our actual view is captured on MP4. I also use the laser pointer or highlighter to point at which expressions are being recorded. Usually, during the one-hour session, I store eight to ten recordings, each 20–30 seconds long. Explain Everything captures those on a timeline as a single short clip, which I then export by creating a ‘Web Video link’

Repetition is the key to memorization. In order to make it easier to access materials from the session, cloud-stored recordings are available on each device I use, Explain Everything renders them as video clips, and I’ve built a habit of repeatedly watching those to revisit concepts learned during previous sessions. And since those clips are part of my cloud-stored project, if I need to revisit some additional notes that were not included on the recording I can do that by accessing the project on my phone.

The added value of choosing a whiteboard over other alternatives has to do with the extension of natural learning habits instead of replacing them. After all, there’s only as much information that can fit a single sheet of paper. In the digital realm, a single project can store multiple lessons that allows for learning to happen in one place. With traditional means it is nearly impossible to practice pronunciation. Short recorded clips, that are captured just in time, can extend visual contents of the project with useful audio cues.

The platform adopts to various situations where learning can take place: during a face to face session with a tutor, while learning alone, or while connecting remotely. When working together, participants don’t hold each other hostage to a single user’s perspective as it’s not a screen share. Each can navigate and work on the materials independently while still tracking who is looking at what thanks to indicators supporting collaboration at a distance.

There are also situations,when I need to ask a question with reference something I encountered while working alone. To do that, I use the Inspector tool and export the piece of content along with my annotations and send it as an iMessage to my tutor.

The unique combination of possibilities in one platform makes it ideal for learning situations such as those illustrated here. Could I achieve similar outcomes without Explain Everything? Possibly, but not without compromises. Platforms usually develop by following a pattern established at some early inception point,the mouse, the keyboard, and point and click computer interfaces represent this fact. And these items perfected over years are now so good, that it’s hard to even consider alternatives.

Explain Everything is a rebel. It gives back the pleasure of keeping good old handwritten notes, supercharged with cloud-collaboration and the ability to record that satisfy the demanding needs of modern learners. Explain Everything is a package offering simplicity in using of our natural learning habits without a sacrifice of versatility.

Learning a Language with Interactive Whiteboards was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With the enormous advancement in technology of the past several years, especially in the field of telecommunications, the distance between people around the world has been significantly shortened. Working with team members who are located across the globe has became standard for most of us. While we use various devices, apps and services for communication within our teams, we often miss out on using the same effective approaches to communicate with our customers.

According to research by Corporate Visions, 61% of salespeople conduct at least half of their meetings over the phone or web. It’s necessary to adjust our means of communication to reach to the clients when we can’t rely on the benefits of face-to-face meetings, especially body language. Often our nonverbal communication has the most power in getting the message through. Having verbal-only communication is simply not engaging enough for modern client communication and reps stand in from of a new challenge, finding their own way of being memorable and convincing.

Remote whiteboard collaboration has become a good answer to the rising need for better visual communication. It can be used to eliminate limitations from a remote team, allowing you to work together regardless of the team member or client’s location.

Remote whiteboarding creates a great environment for active participation. People find drawing and sketching very natural, so seeing how someone draws explanations of concepts grabs attention. Visual storytelling is a great tactic to engage with the prospect and understand their needs better. Studies have shown that people are visual learners meaning that writing and drawing engage the brain in ways that typing and texting don’t. They can increase a person’s ability to think creatively, solve problems, and retain knowledge.

However, 87% of salespeople engage prospects or customers rarely or never with visuals, according to the survey conducted by Corporate Visions. Many companies have started to recognize the opportunity to differentiate in this area. They admit that interactive storytelling techniques would not only make a material difference and move deals forward, but also that it’s the most effective technique to move the prospective or current customer to action.

When trying to find a good solution that would allow remote attendees to participate in whiteboard sessions, it’s important to find a tool that is not only interactive, but allows multiple users to make changes in real time.

Since you’re all together on the same canvas, all your ideas and conclusions are visible in real-time. You can also save your projects for later and add to them if you come up with more ideas or examples. There’s no more need to keep meeting minutes or take photos of an office whiteboard to have successful remote collaboration.

Remote whiteboard collaboration platforms help companies to cut travel costs significantly. Business trips can be pretty expensive when adding up the cumulative costs, like accomodation and meals not to mention time. When you’re using a digital whiteboard you’re not only cutting the need to travel, but the travel costs too. Many solutions allow inviting participants for free, so even if you have a paid account and your customer doesn’t, you’re still able to fully collaborate together and they won’t face any discomfort even without an account.

Of course, most of the solutions are not free, although they may offer some free trials or plans which usually have some limitations. Using collaborative whiteboards for remote meetings is much friendlier for the budget than any conferencing solution. And more importantly, they are mobile just like you. You can conduct your meeting from the office, home or your favorite spot outdoors.

Originally published at explaineverything.com on December 20, 2018.

Using Remote Whiteboard Collaboration to Motivate Your Customers was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is a guest post from Kristin Savage

Everything starts with a great idea. You start to formulate your plan in your mind and bring the elements together. You create an outline and your idea is looking bright and shiny. However, once you begin to realize your plan, things can turn out to be quite different. The elements don’t fit as perfectly as you thought and there are quite a few holes in your idea. What if there were a better way for you to visualize your ideas? Well, if you try using Explain Everything, you’ll soon discover different ways of expressing yourself creatively and bringing your ideas to the next level. This interactive whiteboard app can help you put all the pieces together and bring your creative ideas to life.

Take a look at these 6 creative ways to visualize ideas with Explain Everything.

1. Brainstorming

When you’re in the initial phases of shaping your idea and wrapping your head around it, you could use a bit of brainstorming.

In other words, you just want to throw a couple of ideas out there, get them out of your system and see where things go. Explain Everything offers you a great feature for brainstorming: the whiteboard. It’s pretty self-explanatory: it’s a completely blank template, ready for you to add whatever comes to your mind. You can use it to:

• draw a draft
• type ideas
• combine colors
• scribble and erase
• add shapes

Simply go to Templates and choose Whiteboard. Then, choose tools from the menu on the left side and brainstorm all you want.

2. Capture Using the Camera

When your idea is sitting in your head, there’s a chance it never gets realized. That’s why it’s good to get it out of your system. Well, with Explain Everything you can use the camera on your phone, tablet or iPad to capture instant shots of your newly born ideas. That means that you can record a video or take a picture and automatically place those in your project. This gives you a chance to have an immediate insight into how the newly added media fits in and to do whatever you want with it. Then you can:

• edit it
• set it as a background
• flip it
• set auto rotation

In addition, if you choose the Video Explanation template, you get to record a series of videos and assemble them into a little story about your idea. It’s like making a movie about your creative process. It’s both fun and useful.

3. Break it down

Whether you want to make your idea crystal clear for your own sake or understandable for others, you can use Explain Everything to do so.

Go to Templates and choose Storyboard. It will open a new project with separate spaces for the pieces of your story. This way you’re using the app to create a step-by-step guide to the realization of your entire idea. It allows you to:

• separate the process into phases
• label each phase
• add media and visual aids to each phase
• combine them
• circle them or cross them out

This way, you’re creating an interesting and creative storyline of the steps required. You can save the draft and cross out the completed phases or just use it as a reminder. How great is that?

4. Speak your mind

When you’re expressing yourself creatively, the sky should be your limit. There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of a creative process and not having the required means to finish it. Explain Everything has thought of another great and super-fun feature you can use to visualize your ideas. You can actually record your voice and add it to any of your projects. That means that you could record:

• reminders for yourself
• explanations for others
• funny comments
• profound ideas
• inspiring thoughts

This feature gives depth to your project and helps you and the people you share it with stay on the same page.

5. Collaborate

If you like to share the creative process with your friends or colleagues, Explain Everything lets you create together.

– Go to Invite and Collaborate

– invite people to join you

– enable Voice chat so as to make the communication run smoothly

– start collaborating

Now everyone is on the same interactive board. It means you all get to start adding and combining, pitching ideas and giving feedback to each other. It doesn’t get any better than that!

6. Have fun

Hey, isn’t creativity all about having fun?

Sometimes we get so caught up in worries, stress, and pressure that we forget it’s ok to just relax and have fun. Well, Explain Everything is an app which allows you to:

• experiment
• mess around
• have fun
• get results without the pressure

The best part about Explain Everything? It’s suitable both for your personal ideas and your business projects.

Final thoughts

Explain Everything is a great platform for developing creative thinking and turning ideas into projects. You can use it from different devices and create project after project. You can save them, discard them, come back to them later or share them with others. It never stops surprising you and the more you explore it, the more it has to offer. You’ll find it suitable

for ides of any kind and it’ll help you reach your personal goals. Now, go ahead, have fun, and start bringing those ideas to visualization.

Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. She does her voodoo regularly on the Pick Writers blog and occasionally contributes to other educational platforms. Along with pursuing her degree in Creative Writing, Kristin was gaining experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in marketing strategy for publishers and authors. You can find her on Facebook.

Originally published at explaineverything.com on November 28, 2018.

6 Creative Ways to Visualize Ideas With Explain Everything was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Countless studies show how understanding and retention greatly improves by combining images and words. Writing by hand is also said to increase understanding and retention, as well as enhance creativity and critical thinking as it engages the brain more through special cognitive processing. This is why many lecturers, tutors and professionals choose to provide feedback visually. They are able to let thoughts flow freely and quickly from the mind to the board and better engage with their audiences.

Explain Everything is a great solution for providing visual feedback. It allows you to take the power of the pen and draw in audiences of all sizes no matter where they are located. You can outline complex processes to visualize goals or insert existing documents to highlight certain points. Interactive capabilities enable all participants to add their own illustrative points and be an integral part of the conversation, no matter what device they use. Connect with your colleagues in real time, no matter the device, or record a video message and send it to them.

It’s not necessary to be a great artist to communicate visually. Sometimes a simple arrow or a few doodles may be the spark of an idea that will result in greater understanding and finalizing the project faster. Become a visual communicator and start turning ideas into understanding.

Inspire Understanding with Visual Feedback was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most frustrating problems at work, no matter if you work as a teacher, sales representative, manager or a specialist in your industry, is the lack of understanding. There might be several different solutions to achieve better understanding. One of them is active participation of the other other side, whether it’s your student, a buyer, a teammate or a learner.

Real-time collaboration allows gets everyone on the same page, no matter their location, and gives them the ability to participate actively. Active learning compared with traditional lectures reduces failure rates from 32% to 21%, and increases student performance on course assessments and concept inventories by 0.47 standard deviations. Similar effects can be observed in the sales. A study by Corporate Visions revealed that the more participatory the approach during sales calls the more involved contacts became. They were more likely to take notes or draw simple, concrete visuals and consistently performed best. They were also shown to be vital to improving recall.

Explain Everything allows users to collaborate in real time between any device, which is made even easier with the new online whiteboard. You can use our application on your iPad, tablet or Chromebook, or open a web browser and start a project from there. Other people can connect to follow your annotations and refer to inserted media. Ask your audience to write something that they would like to address or highlight some elements. Make sure everyone collaborates and that you hear their needs.

Participatory collaboration is vital not only in the classroom, but in the business environment too. Even simple gestures that will make the audience participate actively can bring great results and will make them remember your message.

Originally published at explaineverything.com on October 19, 2018.

How Presenting Using Collaboration Can Hammer Your Message Home was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most challenging areas for teams is communication. Although most employees have learned how to overcome the challenges of working in different time zones or have gotten used to working with remote team members, communication remains one of the top challenges for distributed teams. Some issues are related to cultural and language differences, and they are linked to giving and receiving feedback or simply being understood. A great solution to these problems is online whiteboarding.

Most of us process information based on what we see since 65 percent of people are visual learners. This means that using a whiteboard, mind maps and sketches of your ideas works best for the majority of the audience. The same tactics apply when working with internal teams. In order to convey a message clearly, we should simplify and visualize sophisticated ideas and present them to others. Online whiteboards are a great solution for distributed teams. Companies do not need to purchase expensive hardware but instead use already existing infrastructure and find the best software.

How to choose the right online whiteboard

When choosing a web whiteboard we should ask ourselves a few questions. What features are we looking for? How will the results of the sessions be saved? What if someone is absent and we want to present the session?

Accessibility

Since companies may use different operating system on their devices, it is crucial to find a cross-platform solution that would work well no matter if the participants use a Mac, Chromebook or Windows computer with or without a touchscreen. Having a mobile version of a whiteboard for use with a stylus (e.g. Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon) could also have great importance.

Media support

Adding media to a whiteboard is crucial. Whenever we want to explain something or work on a concept, we need to have pictures and documents at our fingertips. Everyday assets such as photos, documents, and presentations should be easily accessible.

Recording

A great feature of online whiteboards is recording. It’s very useful to capture the process of ideation and have a reference in the further stages of a process. Being able to generate an mp4 file from a session allows any interested party to watch and be on the same page.

Customization

For business representatives creating content to be presented to a larger audience, it’s important to be consistent with brand elements such as layout, colors, or assets. Being able to incorporate your own library (e.g. in a form of clipart) can be very useful to showcase consistent messaging.

Conclusion

Online whiteboarding is an effective way to improve communication among team members. Visual representation of ideas can be a great help to be better understood. When choosing a web whiteboard, it’s necessary to consider a couple of aspects such as accessibility, media support, interactive character and more. Only convenient solutions will be used by people.

Originally published at explaineverything.com on September 14, 2018.

How to Choose the Right Online Whiteboard was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Visual thinking and learning are said to be innate as humans have been visually communicating since cave paintings. Countless studies show how understanding and retention greatly improves by combining images and words. In education and business communication, this has happened on dusty chalkboards since the 1800s, crowded cork boards since the 1920s, and wipeable whiteboards since the 1960s. Although they were bulky, had limited space, and were used more as one-way communication vehicles, these products were great tools at the time of their introductions to visually grab the attention of larger audiences simultaneously.

The Power of the Pen

The value of whiteboards in classrooms and offices has hung around through the years. They have been instrumental in instructional tutorials and brainstorming sessions as audiences participate in watching problems be explained and ideas come to life. Writing by hand is also said to increase understanding and retention, as well as enhance creativity and critical thinking as it engages the brain more through special cognitive processing.

Being able to let thoughts flow freely from the mind to the board provides the flexibility that is needed to produce meaningful outcomes. When trying to truly engage with audiences, you have to be ready to adapt to how the conversation unfolds. This is where slide decks have fallen short and why they have been losing their popularity in business presentations. They too are notorious for being one-way performances. The presenter often lets text-heavy slides do the talking and relies heavily on the prepared script, making for a static session. Even with slide decks incorporating images, videos, and animation to make them more visually-appealing, attractive slides alone still do not produce two-way interaction.

Whiteboards have evolved in some fun and entertaining ways. Entire walls can be turned into drawing boards with dry erase wall paint, providing bigger spaces to doodle on. And although some still consist of expensive, bulky equipment, interactive versions have combined the convenience of the whiteboard with the functionality of a computer. Now, whiteboard apps are available and have overcome portability, budget, and sharing limitations, allowing businesses to take advantage of the power of the pen and draw in audiences of all sizes no matter where they are located.

Turn Ideas Into Understanding

Explain Everything’s interactive whiteboard is the ideal platform for creating and sharing powerful, visual stories. Starting with a blank, infinite canvas or importing existing slides and media, intuitive tools allow you to write, annotate, and add emphasis to anything on the screen. Interactive capabilities enable all participants to add their own illustrative points and be an integral part of the conversation. You can also capture, edit, and share all or part of the session for continuous learning. This is especially helpful for people who were not at the live meeting or who need to see how an idea was developed.

Explain Everything is the picture-perfect catalyst for the two-way visual communication that is so important in today’s world. From describing complex concepts to connecting salespeople with prospects to onboarding new employees, you can collaborate, share, and learn without boundaries.

Empower your teams to become visual communicators and start turning ideas into understanding.

Originally published at explaineverything.com on July 5, 2018.

Enhance Visual Communication Using Whiteboard Platforms was originally published in Stories from Explain Everything on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.