Real collaboration is harder to pull off than it sounds. One canvas, thirty students, everyone contributing at the same time, not waiting their turn, not working in silos. That’s the dream and it’s also usually the problem.
Canva Whiteboards gets closer than anything I’ve seen.
I sat in on a session at ISTE this summer and left with a new go-to. The whiteboard gives you an infinite canvas where up to 50 people work together in real time. Live cursors, sticky notes, mind maps, flowcharts. You can see exactly who is doing what, follow any student with one click, and watch the thinking happen collectively instead of in separate documents nobody else can see.
For anyone still mourning Jamboard, this is the replacement you’ve been looking for.
A couple of features stuck with me beyond the collaboration piece. The synced timer with music is a small feature, but one click and the whole class works on the same countdown. That changes the energy of an activity. You can also embed polls and let students record themselves directly in the whiteboard, which adds a whole other layer to student voice.
My first move is putting students on a shared canvas for mind mapping. I want to see what happens when the thinking is visible to everyone at once.
