A school year full of Explain Everything updates

Over the past year, Explain Everything updates brought new ways to create, edit, and manage your projects. You can now work with more types of objects, generate content, get learning insights, and reuse elements without leaving the canvas. Additionally, improvements to recording, navigation, and workspace layout give you more control over how you work.

Apart from introducing new and powerful features, our goal for the year  was to bring all Explain Everything platforms closer in terms of experience and available tools. Whether you got your Explain Everything from the App Store or Google Play, are using it in a browser, or have it as part of Promethean ActivSuite—all of these versions are now more similar to one another than ever before.

What’s new in Explain Everything on the iPad

Here are the key features and enhancements introduced over the past year in the Explain Everything available on the App Store.

Generate content with Apple Intelligence

The brand new Smart creator for Activities allows you to generate activities with a description. Enter a topic, title, or using existing slide content, to create Matching, Memory, and Crossword activities. The generated activity can work as a starting point you can further edit and adjust.

In a similar fashion Image Playground and Writing Tools allow you to generate images and adjust text on the canvas. When you select text, you can rewrite, summarize, or reorganize it. As for Images, you can generate them from text or drawings you already created.

Get engagement insights with Learning Check-in

With Learning Check-in 👑 you can get feedback on your or your student’s engagement and readiness for deep learning. After recording a video of a person engaging in a learning activity, you can submit it for analysis. The system will processes the recording using an AI model. You’ll get feedback, insights, and recommendations related to engagement that are linked to the recording.

Better project organization…

The Library now allows placing folders inside other folders when organizing projects on your device.

You can now also sync your Explain Everything projects on all your iCloud devices. Enable iCloud Sync in Settings to synchronize your local projects with your iCloud account.

…and editing

Meanwhile on the canvas, you can now transform your drawings and handwriting into shapes or text with the touch of a button. The recognition mode in the Draw tool menu lets you see shape and text suggestions based on your drawing or writing. Select them and your drawing will convert into an editable shape or text object.

Finding your whiteboard too cluttered? Touch and hold an empty area and select Clear whiteboard to wipe the entire slide. This allows you to reset the canvas without having to manually select everything on it.

What’s new in Explain Everything on the Web

Here are the key features and enhancements introduced over the past year in the web version of Explain Everything.

Record videos of yourself directly from the project

The New video option in Add Media allows you to create an empty video placeholder and record into it later. This way, you can create a video using your camera right in your project or feature a video of yourself to personalize it.

Tools for teaching

Math Tools 👑 feature rulers, triangles, protractors, and compasses so you can measure and draw precise lines and shapes on the canvas.

Get engagement insights with Learning Check-in

Similarly to iPads, Explain Everything on the Web now features Learning Check-in 👑. Get feedback on your or your student’s engagement and readiness for deep learning. After recording a video of a person engaging in a learning activity, you can submit it for analysis. The system will processes the recording using an AI model. You’ll get feedback, insights, and recommendations related to engagement that are linked to the recording.

Manage and reuse your content

Custom Clipart 👑 allows you to save objects from the canvas into your personal Clipart library. You can access those saved elements later again when working in other projects.

Custom Templates in the cloud 👑 allow you to save entire projects as templates. They will sync across your account and devices as they remain available when creating or updating new projects.

Adjust your workspace

You can now adjust the Toolbar and interface positions on the fly. Drag the toolbar and make it snap to the edges or manually align all toolbars to a desired position.

Split Whiteboard 👑 divides the workspace into two separate areas, each with its own tool set. Designed specifically for Promethean ActivPanel and its multi-touch capabilities, both sections operate independently, allowing interaction with each area at the same time. You can access it in the Workspace layouts on the Toolbar.

What’s new in Explain Everything on Android devices

Here are the features and enhancements introduced over the past year in the Explain Everything available on Google Play.

Expanded and adjusted creative tools

Drawing now includes static and scaling pen width setting. It controls how stroke thickness responds to zoom. When enabled, the Draw tool keeps the line width consistent within a certain zoom range.

Alongside iPads, you can now transform your drawings and handwriting into shapes or text on Android devices as well. Enable the recognition mode in the Draw tool menu to see shape and text suggestions based on your drawing or writing. Select them and your drawing will convert into an editable shape or text object.

With the updates we also added more than 40 shapes and new laser pointer styles. You can now also erase shapes using Erase with Images mode of the Eraser. To top it all off, you can also touch and hold an empty area and select Clear whiteboard to clear everything with a single action.

Digitalize documents and reuse your Flipchart files

The Add Media menu now features a built-in document scanner so you scan your documents and add them to your canvas.

And in case you’re switching from ActivInspire app, you can now use your existing Flipchart files to create Explain Everything projects out of them. Your original file will not change, and you will be able to reuse its content on the canvas.

Record audio clips directly from the project

New Audio allow you to create an empty audio placeholder and record into it later. The object can be placed on the canvas before recording takes place. Once recorded, you can control its playback just like with other media objects. This way you can record audio narration and effects without having to leave Explain Everything.

More recording editing options

Timeline updates introduce more editing actions that you can apply after recording. From the timeline menu, you can now smooth object movement for more fluid motion and apply audio fade-in to audio clips so their sound starts more gradually.

Customize your export settings

Image, PDF, and Web Video Link sharing options now feature new export settings. Adjust the format, quality, and have more control over the exported content.

Search in Google Drive and templates

Google Drive Search expands the Google Drive integration so you can now search for files you’d like to import. The Template Search allows you to find templates when starting a new project or when adding a new slide to you project.

Jump-to-slide

For those who create large projects, you can now navigate them by entering a slide number to jump right to it.

The future

The updates over the past year mark an important point in the history of Explain Everything. We’ve brought all platforms to work under a unified Explain Everything engine. This may sound oddly technical and it very much is. While we don’t want to overwhelm you with unnecessary technical details, the bottom line is that it allows us to be more timely and efficient when introducing new features on all platforms. And there are many, many more we can’t wait to share with you. Stay tuned.