What’s on the horizon? Meet the future Explain Everything!
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We’re never done with our mission to enhance the digital whiteboard that has proven quite the helpful tool for thousands of teachers and students. As the world continues to learn new ways of communicating, cooperating and sharing information in remote or hybrid models, Explain Everything is working to continue meeting these needs every single day. Check out what’s coming and all the ways your digital whiteboarding experience will improve!
Please note that designs shown in this post are not final and all graphics are just for example purposes.
Explain Everything 2021 – for the best whiteboard app experience
Last year was big for our app, as it brought significant all-platform changes to two use cases that you use Explain Everything for most: recording and collaboration. But 2021 is going to be even better, not only in terms of further improvements, but (and perhaps mainly) because we have a lot of extra and new features planned!
“Our goal is always to make teachers’ (and other app users’) experience easier. We aim for simplicity, clarity and predictability. The platform should always be stable but also allow everyone to do their work faster and easier. And this is what we want to achieve this year.” Piotr, Head of Product
At the beginning of 2021, we asked our Head of Product about his team’s plans for developing the product – you can watch the whole webinar here. Now it’s time to share an update about all the things that are coming, and some that are already here. So without further ado, this is the list of things we’re focused on and will be delivering successively over the next few months.
- Learning Management System expanded integrations
- Custom interface for you or your audience (when collaborating)
- Better online whiteboard for any groups
- Guided scenarios and learning helper for a better start and a quick use-case
- Online whiteboard (Explain Everything web version) translations
- Screen taps sounds removal from recordings
Now, let’s dive deeper into these news items, shall we?
Explain Everything and LMS – expanded integrations for more convenient classroom management
We already have some integrations with popular LMS systems, like Google Classroom or Schoology, and we know how important they are. In order to give all teachers a solution that fits perfectly into their schools’ systems, we made 2021 the year of LMS focus.
What can you expect?
Explain Everything has been focusing on expanded integrations with Canvas, Google Classroom, Moodle, Blackboard and Microsoft Teams.
By doing this, we will allow both teachers and students to be able to easily access, create and share Explain Everything assignments through the LMS chosen by their school. There are two main scenarios we want to explore and deliver:
Creating whiteboard sessions in LMS courses.
Whenever there is a need to conduct a remote or hybrid lesson, you can easily go live with Explain Everything whiteboard. There will be no need to share a code or a link with your class as the session will be available for your students directly from the system.
This integration will be first available with Canvas, but our aim is to deliver a similar solution to other LMSs.
Teacher’s perspective:
Student’s perspective:
Creating assignments in Explain Everything which students can hand back in through the LMS, too.
You won’t have to switch between your LMS and a whiteboard to be able to create an assignment, send it out to a student and receive it back. This means that the process of assigning and checking tasks will be as convenient as it can be.
Teacher’s perspective:
Student’s perspective:
To sum up: no switching between tools, easy access within an LMS, more control over the class, and sticking to one well-known and safe tool is something you can count on with Explain Everything.
Customizable Workspace Layout – personalize the whiteboard app to ideally suit your needs
Whenever you need more space on your canvas or just a few tools for your project instead of a whole long menu, you will be able to customize this in Workspace Layouts. Simply switch on or off any tools or features to declutter the whiteboard or bring more options to it. While sharing a project, you can also decide to what extent you want your participants to collaborate.
What can you expect?
- Customizable interface when working solo or broadcasting your whiteboard – choose between Standard, Presenter, Simple or Custom modes.
- Decide which tools are to be available to your participants when collaborating. This means that whenever you share a live project with your class, you can either block editing for your students completely or select which specific tools they have access to. This will not only enhance your control over collaborative whiteboards even more, but also let you adjust the workspace to your students’ needs.
To sum up: Whether you’re working alone or sharing a live project, you can customize the workspace on your canvas and tailor it to your and your participants’ needs.
Better online whiteboarding for any and all groups
Gone are the times of being able to share an online whiteboard with a limited number of people only. We’re working very hard on our collaboration feature so as to allow bigger groups – ideally an entire class – to work on the same project, and most importantly, do so without any more errors or issues!
What can you expect?
Better overall performance will guarantee you a better collaboration experience, whether you’re sharing a project with one person or 20 people. What we want most of all is to be able to offer our users the best online whiteboard sessions that we can deliver – with fast joins, no desynchronization or disconnections whatsoever, as well as the ability to work in any restricted network.
To sum up: with Explain Everything’s 2021 improvements, both bigger groups and all individual users will benefit from better online collaboration.
Guided scenarios and learning helper for a better start and quick use-case management
Good news for first-timers and those Explainers who know exactly what they want to achieve. Our completely new starting menu will contain a selection of guided scenarios, complete with an interactive learning helper, that will show you exactly where to start and which tool to use to achieve your goal.
But these features are not only for those who have just started and need some support taking their first steps. If you want to use Explain Everything quickly for a particular scenario, such as annotations or recording, these will work like shortcuts and personalized app versions. You don’t need to know about all our features at first, or even ever – the learning helper and guided scenarios will smooth your experience and abbreviate your creation process.
What can you expect?
A couple of guided scenarios should be ready by the end of the summer. You can count on these shortcuts and helpers:
- Animation recording
- Document annotation
- Inviting others
- Brainstorming with sticky notes
- Grouping and ungrouping content
- Zoom and Pan efficiently
To sum up: start from a particular scenario instead of an empty canvas and achieve your project goals quicker. Take advantage of the smart helper that will guide you through a particular use-case and teach you how to use the Explain Everything whiteboard in no time.
Here’s is a little demo of how these guided scenarios and helpers will look on the example of grouping and ungrouping objects:
Explain Everything web version in a few new languages
The Explain Everything online whiteboard that everyone can use on any web browser has been improved a lot since last year. But there’s still more to come! This year, we’ll introduce our web version in 9 new languages!
What can you expect?
The Explain Everything online whiteboard will finally be available not only in English, but also in:
- Danish
- Norwegian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Portugese
- Italian
- Spanish
- Polish
AI-powered pencil tap sound removal
One of the most frequent requests coming from teachers using our whiteboard to record explainer videos was to help them remove the pen tapping noises that are sometimes captured by the tablet’s microphone.
In battling these pesky sounds, we chose our weapons wisely – and then went to a war with something of a cannon! Explain Everything will soon be equipped with another AI-powered element we have taught to recognize and eliminate various pen tap sounds.
No more workarounds, no more tapping!
In case you missed it! It’s already in Explain Everything
Earlier this year, we introduced some new items, features and improvements. Apart from the regular maintenance work and the continuous development of the best whiteboard app for teachers there is, we also try to add something new every now and then. Our goal is to make Explain Everything what you’d like it to be. We do our best to listen to all the feedback you send over!
Here are the highlights of our 2021 improvements that are already available:
- Group license management with Clever.
- You can now sign into Explain Everything using your Microsoft account on the iOS app and web platform. Want to have this option in the Android version, too? Let us know!
- Digital sticky notes are now available in Explain Everything whiteboard on all platforms!
Phew, that was a lot! If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback, let us know. You can share your thoughts on our Explain Everything Group on Facebook or simply send us an email!
