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What Is a Digital Whiteboard?

You’ve known analog whiteboards for years and may have already used interactive whiteboards, but chances are you still wonder: what is a digital whiteboard? Think of it as a solution that offers a fantastic opportunity to modernise classrooms and workplaces. The applications are many and can help leverage group learning, content sharing, and team effort. If you’re trying to find out how different are digital whiteboards from interactive, online, or analog ones, don’t worry. These terms may seem confusing at first, but the distinction is quite simple, and we’ll break it down for you right now. 

Keep reading to learn more about digital whiteboards and their key features or explore ViewSonic’s solution myViewboard and discover how you can seamlessly integrate it into your projects. 

What is a digital whiteboard? For starters, it is a great tool for distance learning, hybrid education, and remote work models. It reimagines participation, lesson planning, productivity, and knowledge acquisition. 

The ever-changing reality has impacted the way we look at available online and offline tools. It’s important for students and employees alike to collaborate in various hybrid configurations. With the growing digitalisation of schools and workplaces, traditional whiteboards are not cutting it anymore. It’s time for their interactive successors, whose features and intuitive interfaces are reimagining teamwork and teaching.  

What Is a Digital Whiteboard? 

Also referred to as a virtual or online whiteboard, a digital whiteboard is a software solution that replicates the functions of an analog whiteboard. Put simply, it’s a whiteboard you can use on a computer, smartphone, tablet, or any compatible electronic device. All that you share in a classroom or during a meeting, others can view in real-time or later online. The most advanced software offers graphic and annotation features and can even integrate a broad range of media such as videos, interactive content, or 3D models.  

The digital whiteboard, in other words, is a content-rich interactive platform that everyone has access to at any point. All students and team members feel included in the lesson at any stage of the project regardless of their location. Everything that participants create can be easily saved, so you can finally say goodbye to notebooks, pencil sharpeners, or pens. With a digital whiteboard, everyone is always prepared.  

The concept of digital whiteboarding is deeply rooted in the education world. However, similar solutions have become increasingly popular in the workplace. In the office setting, you’d call them “online whiteboards” or “digital whiteboarding apps.”  

Benefits of digital whiteboard

Key Features of Digital Whiteboards 

Digital whiteboards are tools designed to present, interact, and collaborate. But, contrary to their analog counterparts, they offer a whole lot of features that foster engagement and bolster preparation. Let’s take a closer look at the most distinctive ones: 

1. Access your files from anywhere

The best digital whiteboards have the possibility to save to cloud storage everything that’s been displayed on-screen. Online access to files offers unparalleled peace of mind and convenience for all. It facilitates business meetings, project updates, and distance or hybrid learning. 

As participants, trainees, or collaborators don’t feel the pressure of noting everything down first, they can utilise newfound time and energy to actively focus on the lesson or task at hand.  

2. Engage, connect, and interact

Our lives are strongly connected to digital reality, and that only expands with engaging visual content. Transforming the way we work, teach, and learn through online visual displays offers exciting possibilities. Videos, pictures, 3D drawings, or diagrams increase performance productivity while making the whole experience more fun for everyone involved. 

When the students enjoy the class, they pay more attention to the lesson material and retain more of its contents. The teachers, on the other hand, can access a rich content database and plan high-quality, engrossing lessons effortlessly. 

3. Collaborate remotely

With the digital whiteboard, you can also streamline your board in real-time and have everyone participate at the same level. Brainstorming sessions and meeting recordings enhance remote learning and collaboration. Students and colleagues alike can contribute to the ongoing projects by making annotations, uploading their work from home, and redesigning visuals seamlessly across devices. As a consequence, empowered cooperation creates an inclusive ecosystem for those teaching, learning, or working remotely.  

4. Use a variety of media formats

The digital whiteboard encourages applying diverse multimedia. With a few clicks and a connection to the internet, teachers can view online resources, browse the content library, and find information faster. On top of that, they can include animated widgets, 3D models, and sticky notes by directly dropping them on a limitless canvas. 

Having so many different eye-catching assets truly elevates any collaborative experience from passive observation to active engagement.   

Digital Whiteboard vs Interactive Whiteboard 

While the digital whiteboard is the software, the interactive whiteboard is the hardware. Also called an interactive flat-panel display, this is the physical object you get to literally interact with. 

In simple words, an interactive whiteboard is a traditional whiteboard taken from meeting rooms and classrooms converted into a huge touch screen display. It is the product that allows you to write, touch, and draw while accessing different multimedia instantly. To be able to fully benefit from it, though, you need a compatible program that will allow you to integrate and process all the material you wish. This is where digital whiteboards come into play. 

If an interactive whiteboard is the body, then a digital whiteboard is the brain and the mind – the operational headquarters that allow all the processes to happen. You can combine notes, create documents, artworks, lessons, presentations, and later store content on embedded storage or on the cloud. Together, interactive, and digital whiteboards create a fully functioning whole.  

digital whiteboard interactive whiteboard difference

Digital Whiteboard vs Analog Whiteboard 

The analog whiteboard is the old-school whiteboard that comes with markers and an eraser. While it provided a smooth transition from the blackboard in the past to modern solutions, it poses many limitations in today’s technologically advanced world. Interactive whiteboards with a built-in online learning platform (digital whiteboard) and infinite canvas offer so much more than their non-computerised predecessor. 

Not to mention great flexibility thanks to its digital format. You can simply open it on your phone or a laptop during a meeting, review on a bus ride, or access while teleworking. Having a portable whiteboard that doesn’t bind you in time and space creates new ways of collaborating, learning, and teaching. 

Work and Education Transformed 

A digital whiteboard works like collective storage where assembled tools create a new quality of teamwork, coursework, and project management. It transforms any setting where people get together to share knowledge, bring values, or introduce new ideas to the world. 

1. Connected Workplaces

Using a digital whiteboard gives way to seamless employee participation – in remote, hybrid, and in-office configurations. Thanks to easy content creation and annotation tools, preparing and presenting becomes less of an issue and more of an asset, especially under tight deadlines. This virtual platform is also very useful when team members are scattered across countries or time zones.   

Make sure to look for enterprise-level data protection that will provide for secure data sharing. Then, with just a few clicks, you can unbury important information from under a pile of e-mails or lost as attachments in the downloads folder. This is a huge time-saver.  

2. Modern Classrooms

The digital whiteboard is revolutionising education, bringing historic change to EdTech solutions. It fosters engagement, attention, and focus. Any lesson topic can now be visualised, gamified, and presented in breath taking ways. The classroom use of such online sharing platforms also cultivates digital citizenship. Furthermore, it helps develop skills needed for future-facing jobs in STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) or arts and design.   

If you’re looking for something tried-and-tested, one of the tools you could go for is ViewSonic’s myViewBoard, a visual learning platform that streamlines lesson planning and evaluation methods. With a rich content library called Originals, it boasts premade lessons, interactive backgrounds, and games. Template teaching materials and quizzes on a vast selection of topics empower efficient preparation, presentation, and participation. As a result, teachers have less work to do, and students get to engage more deeply through gamified content on an infinite canvas.  

Another interesting about myViewBoard is a cross-platform Open Learning Format (OLF). Usually, whiteboard files are tied to one device or software and do not allow any additional integration. Outdated or non-flexible media formats limit schools’ or offices’ capacity to adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape. ViewSonic’s OLF future-proofs modern classrooms by allowing all available media types, for swift work on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and the web.   

Final Thoughts 

When learning what a digital whiteboard is, it’s important to remember the distinction between hardware and software. Interactive whiteboards are flat panel displays that work as physical hardware and digital whiteboards are virtual learning platforms that work as software. Thanks to these tools, we can create, brainstorm, and visualise information in new and technologically advanced ways.  

In these exciting times, collaboration and learning are becoming more efficient, fun, and convenient for all kinds of learning and working environments. Digital whiteboards pave the way for modern workplaces, classrooms, and collaborative spaces.    

If you enjoyed this article, you may also be interested in reading our complete guide to technology in the classroomor exploring ViewSonic’s Education solutions. 

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