Zoom's Whiteboard lets you to provide input (and facilitate interaction) by serving as a digital classroom board — but with the added capability of showing typed text as well as annotations, images and drawings.
“Learners need input to learn. To achieve high levels of competence in an L2 they need exposure to massive amounts of input.”
Ellis & Shintani, p. 186
Like other input sources, the Whiteboard is available through the Share Screen function — assuming that you have turned it on first in your Settings. (See Zoom → Whiteboard for step-by-step instructions on accessing and using the Whiteboard.)
By using the Zoom Whiteboard as a source of input for students, you can:
- type questions on the Whiteboard and have students type their responses in the Chat field
- provide visual representations of grammatical features (e.g., word order or morphemes), using the T/Text tool along with the Drawing tool to create circles and arrows
- read a short text slowly out loud, and type it while you’re reading so that students can watch (as well as listen to) the narrative unfold
- ask students for responses to a prompt, type in what they say, and then use the Draw tool or the Stamp tool to provide responses, comments or corrections
- type in a headline from a media source and explain it while underlining or circling the elements you want to focus on
- play Pictionary: Pick a vocabulary word, draw a simple representation of it (using the Drawing tool) and see who can guess the word first by writing it into the Chat field.
The Whiteboard function allows you to copy and paste from other text sources (Word, PDF, email). This means you can:
- prepare a Word document with sentences from students’ homework assignments, then copy and paste them, sentence by sentence, into the Whiteboard while providing comments or corrective feedback
- have students email you quotes from an assigned reading text, e.g., a sentence (or short paragraph) that they found especially interesting, or difficult, or provocative — then copy and paste it into the Whiteboard so you can analyze it together, using arrows, hearts, or lines to highlight the relevant words or sentences.
Whiteboard can be configured (see Zoom → Settings) to allow other participants to annotate it, which opens up additional possibilities for input and interaction:
- As a warm-up activity: Have students collaboratively compile a list of synonyms for a word you've provided; words that begin with a particular letter of the alphabet; words that rhyme; words of two/three/four syllables; new vocabulary words for the day; words that describe a particular topic.
- Have each student write add a sentence to the Whiteboard from an assignment (e.g., a short description / a sentence with a particular grammatical feature / a sentence using a particular word or phrase) and then comment on what they've written; use the Stamp function to award stars or hearts; and annotate the sentences with lines or arrows.
- Organize a game of charades with students making the drawings: Send one student a word privately in Chat, and have the designated student draw something on the Whiteboard that will elicit that word from the group; everyone else writes the word they think the designated student is drawing, until the student stamps a checkmark/heart/star next to the correct word to end the round.
- Prepare multiple choice questions — vocabulary, grammar functions, cultural topics, etc. — in a Word document; copy and paste them one by one onto the Whiteboard; and let students use the Stamp tool (checkmark/heart/star) to indicate what they think is the correct answer.
References & Resources
Ellis, R. and Shintani, N. (2014). Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research. London & New York: Routledge.
A YouTube tutorial on Whiteboard annotations and controlling how students use this feature: [4:30]