My new job is almost fully remote. Since I will be conducting many online meetings, I’ve decided that I need to be able to draw on a whiteboard, and annotate documents, in a clear way within meetings.
There seem to be a lot of options.
Let’s start with the hardware.
I could 1) buy a graphics tablet, 2) have a touchscreen as my main monitor, or 3) have a smaller touchscreen monitor as a secondary display.
I think option 3, as funny as it sounds, would probably work best. I could lay the secondary monitor flat on a table which would be optimal for drawing on.
Then in terms of software, ideally it would be compatible with the main meeting types – basically Teams, Zoom, maybe Webex. Other people ideally should be able to draw too (though of course they will look like kids using a mouse ). Document annotation is nice to have…I can do a lot just by live editing a document.
I know Teams has something built in, but no-one who’s used it has said very positive things…is it a little flaky?
I don’t know if these are still in vogue but a few of my instructors during the pandemic used “document cameras” which pointed straight down onto the desk and whatever you were writing. The upside was that you can write an draw as you normally would on paper. The downsides were that your hand and arm obscures part of what you’re writing, and there was no immediate method for transmitting the documents electronically. My instructors usually scanned them after the course and uploaded them for us. Another drawback for your application is that others can’t easily annotate the documents.
From the perspective of a student viewing the camera feed, I think it was fairly decent. The instructor’s aptitude with the hardware was an important factor.
As I understand it, to be strictly accurate, Teams doesn’t have a truly native collaborative feature. Rather, there is a standalone Microsoft app called Whiteboard which, when activated for your org, can optionally be invoked within Teams.
My company activated a trial last fall, and dumped it after a week because it was kind of junk. So I may not have the details perfectly correct.
Yeah. As far as I know, that’s a standard feature these days. And it will work with regular styluses, unlike monitors which are usually still touch based, or need a special pen.
My wife is a teacher and uses a document camera in her classes. I’m almost positive that she screen-shares the document camera via Zoom, so the student can see what she’s writing live as she writes it.
). Document annotation is nice to have…I can do a lot just by live editing a document.