Free Collaborative Online Whiteboard - Excalidraw
Do you remember how much fun it was to be allowed to draw on
the board in a classroom? Who could resist the temptation when the teacher was
out of the room? Today's tool is a techie way to have the same fun.
Excalidraw is a free online whiteboard. What sets it apart from those found in Zoom or Teams is that it is collaborative – multiple people can write or draw on it simultaneously. As with all of the tools we promote, it is free, and easy to use.
This is really useful for online training, as groups can work together on a topic or exercise, such as a SWOT analysis or brainstorming or any other board based activity. You could even use it to entertain your kids in the holidays with hangman or other activities
At the end of the exercise, you can save and download the work done as an image.
An especially good feature of this tool is that you don't need to create an account to use it, and all of the data is saved locally on your machine meaning you can use it without attracting advertising, tracking or any other unwanted interest. (very often 'free online' tools are only free to use as you and your data are the product!)
To use the board:
- simply go to the website, and select a tool (pen; shape or typing) and
- start writing.
- Delete an element by clicking on it and using delete on your keyboard or
- Use the 'hand' tool to move it.
- Use the 'share' button or 'Live Collaboration' in the menu (3 horizontal lines) to invite others to participate.
- At the end of the session, select 'save to' in the menu
Menu bar:
Hand tool – move 1) Select 2) draw a square 3) draw a triangle 4) draw a circle 5) draw an arrow 6) draw a line 7) pencil for free drawing 8) typing tool 9) insert a picture 0) eraser
There are options to adjust the size of lines, the colours you use etc, and an AI input that will help you if you need it.
Each person who clicks on the link for the board (click on share to get the link) is assigned a random ID, but can change this to your own name.
There are help files, and even a Youtube channel to help if
you need it:
For those who are a bit more tech savvy, there is a Discord chat and you can see the code in Github. (These are both free tools, widely used by developers. Github is a place to store code you want to share with others (open source) and Discord is a free online group chat. One of the nifty things about Discord is that you can belong to multiple groups of chats (channels) and switch between them, so if you work on multiple projects, you only need one account, and each channel operates independently. It will be the subject of a future blog.
This is a really nifty, easy to use tool that is very intuitive. We used this recently in a group zoom meeting to plan project activities. Only one of the team had seen it before, but within minutes we were all working away at it.
If you're looking for a tool to make your next meeting, presenation or lesson more interesting, Excalidraw is brilliant.