BaiBoard - A Collaborative Interactive Whiteboard App

BaiBoard is a free multi-page collaborative virtual whiteboard available for the iPad.  Like many apps designed for businesses, educators have thought outside the box and are using it as a viable resource for their classrooms.

One high school teacher uses BaiBoard and his iPad as his slate.  BaiBoard gives you the ability to share the virtual whiteboard with an IP address.  He opens a browser on his computer connected to a projector and is able to present material to students while using a stylus on the iPad, walking around the room as you would a slate. 

BaiBoard tools consist of several pens, up to four pages, and the ability to bring in images or documents.  For instance teaching math you could bring in a xy coordinate plane and for creating graphs, or take a picture of a students solution and annotate over the top.  The board contents remained saved associated to the board number for future reference until the board owner clears it.

A second pair of elementary teachers use BaiBoard's collaboration piece to have students work together to solve math problems.  Once you create a new board, you can return to that board providing you remember the board number.  You can also have multiple authors joining one board.  Thus, students in two different schools join the same board on iPad's at each school, and collaboratively work on math problems.

Here is a video of one 3rd grade classroom using BaiBoard.  Students would post problems from classroom A, and students in classroom B would solve them.


In rolling out the app to this 3rd grade class, the two teachers agreed to have their students join specific board numbers at the same time, with some students in each class on the same board.  It took under 5 minutes for students to find the chat feature inside BaiBoard and thus communicate with each other.

 BaiBoard is a nice collaborative virtual whiteboard available free for the iPad.  Give it a try. 

Screenleap - Easily Share Your Desktop

Screenleap is a website that allows a person to share their desktop for viewing with any device with an internet browser. Great for districts allowing BYOD!

The first thing I think of  is sharing presentations out to the devices in the students' hands for easier viewing.  For students sitting in a large classroom, trying to take notes from the board, having the capability to snap a screenshot of the slides of a presentation to refer to later is a great tool.


A middle school math teacher in our region recently used this app with students in her class.  "I have the clickers out and students are working on problems and sending in answers.  It has been wonderful. Students are watching their iPad screens while I'm using Activeinspire and writing without any problems."

Ease of use for this site is great - no sign up required.  Once you choose to share your screen it gives a 9 digit access code.

Students access your screen on their device by going to the same site (www.screenleap.com) which could easily be added as a bookmark on their home screen.  They then enter the same 9 digit access code to view what the teacher is doing on their screen.

Reflection - PC Alternative to Apple TV

A week or so ago Reflection released a PC client to their Mac version allowing Air Display for an iPad onto a computer.  It didn't take long to install and give it a whirl.  Here is what we like.

Reflection allows you to simultaneously display multiple iDevices at once on the computer screen.  Any of those displays can be re-sized with the mouse.  This will make a perfect opportunity for a teacher to allow students to share their creations with the class.

However, it is recommended that the teacher create a password for connection, to ward off any unwanted guests reflecting their own device from somewhere on the network.

If the teacher has Inspire or Notebook, you can use your pen annotate tool to write on top of an iPad screen enabling a more visual explanation.

Use a Snip-it tool, or a camera tool, to take screen shots of the iPad and embed them in documents, posts, wherever.

Price is reasonable.  And as always, be sure to work with your IT person and have them assist you with technical difficulties, as there can be a couple of settings to alter depending on your network.  In particular you need to enable multi-casting on the WAN, and be sure the firewall settings are not blocked for the software.

Mirroring your iPad on a PC with AirServer

There are lots of option for using your iPad with your projector.
A VGA cord straight to the projector (requiring you to be tethered to your projector) and the apple TV set up.  We have some great tips for Apple TV with older projectors that we will post about later.
 On a Mac there has been the option of purchasing Mac app called Reflection which mirrors your iPad to your computer (thus allowing you to project what you are doing on your iPad through the projector).  There is a time  limited trial available on their site, and in limited, I mean 10 minutes.... 

VERY recently AirServer came out - enabling you to mirror your iOS device on your PC and/or Mac.  The PC version is a pre-release version with only mirroring (audio will come with later free updates) thus it is Version 0.9!

With a 7 day free trial you will be able to get plenty of time playing with it to see if this is the right choice for you as a way to project your iPad.  Once audio is enabled on the PC version, I personally feel the $7.99 price tag for a standard license is well worth it. 

My desktop with Geoboard mirroring via AirServer

 

To download a free 7 day trial  

of AirServer visit this link.

A few notes:

• Again, with the PC version there is currently no audio as part of the mirroring.  This will change as updates are rolled out for free...... so grab it while the price is low! 
• Notice on the download - it asks for you to do this through a facebook account....I did it and chose private as to who could see my activity on facebook.  I have not had them post a single thing on my account since I downloaded the trial.  
• I did have to do a Direct X install/update on my computer in order for the download to work.  
• There is nothing to install on your iPad. 
• You can rename your computer, though setting a passcode (so students don't take over) is not activated for the PC version....yet.....
• But even without a passcode - Joe was mirroring on my computer and even though I was clicking on "airplay" on my iPad, I was not able to kick him off.  I did not mirror until he turned his off.