One of the most common workarounds in online tutoring is the two-tool setup: a video platform for the call and a separate whiteboard tool for visual explanation. Tutors share their screen to show Excalidraw, Tldraw, Whiteboard.chat, or a PDF they annotate in real-time. It works — sort of. But it means students are looking at a shared screen instead of seeing their tutor's face, switching between tabs breaks the flow, and collaborative drawing requires everyone to open the same external link.
Starting today, Simpleclass includes a built-in whiteboard directly inside the video session. Both teachers and students can draw, write, and collaborate on the same canvas — without leaving the session, without sharing a screen, and without any external tools.
Object-Based, Not Pixel-Based
The Simpleclass whiteboard uses an object-based canvas. Every element you add — a shape, a freehand stroke, a text note, an uploaded image — is an individual object that you can select, move, resize, rotate, and delete independently. Select any object and a floating context menu appears above it with options to bring it to front, send it to back, lock it in place, copy it, or resize it to fit the canvas. This is fundamentally different from pixel-based drawing tools where everything you draw becomes a flat image that can only be erased, not rearranged.
Why does this matter? Because teaching is iterative. A math tutor draws a graph, then realizes they need to shift it left to make room for the equation. Select and drag. A language teacher writes example sentences, then wants to reorder them by difficulty. Select and move. Over the course of a session, these small differences add up to a much smoother teaching experience compared to erasing and redrawing.
A Full Drawing Toolkit
The bottom toolbar provides everything you need without overwhelming you. There are three freehand drawing tools: a marker for precise lines, a thick brush for bolder strokes, and a wide highlighter for marking up content. Each tool remembers its own color and size settings independently — switch from marker to highlighter and back without reconfiguring anything.
Beyond freehand drawing, there's a shapes menu with lines, arrows, rectangles, circles, and their filled variants. A text tool creates sticky-note-style text blocks with a warm yellow background — click anywhere on the canvas, start typing, and the note appears. When you select a text note, a floating toolbar lets you change the font (Arial, Quicksand, Georgia, Courier, Comic Sans, Verdana), adjust the size from 14 to 64 points, toggle bold, italic, and underline, set text alignment, change text color from a curated palette of neutrals and vivid tones, or swap the note's background to any of the pastel shades (warm, cool, natural) or go transparent. There's also an image tool: click where you want the image, pick a file from your computer, and it's placed on the canvas — images are automatically compressed to keep real-time sync fast even on slower connections.
The eraser works on whole objects — drag across strokes or shapes to remove them. And the nine-color palette (black, red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, pink) with three brush sizes feels immediately familiar, so there's no learning curve.
Real-Time Collaboration Over LiveKit
The whiteboard isn't just a teacher presentation tool — it's a shared workspace. Every action syncs in real-time through LiveKit's data channels: when someone draws a stroke, other participants see it appear as it's being drawn, not after it's finished. Objects, movements, text edits, and deletions all propagate instantly. Late joiners receive a full canvas snapshot so they see everything that's already been drawn.
Teachers control who can draw. A toggle in the toolbar enables or disables student drawing permissions for the entire session. When drawing is disabled, students see the whiteboard in view-only mode — they can watch the teacher work but can't modify anything. When enabled, everyone collaborates on the same canvas. This makes it easy to switch between teacher-led explanation and student participation.
In group sessions, each breakout room gets its own whiteboard state. Students in a breakout room collaborate on their group's canvas, and the teacher, monitoring from the overview, can see what each group is producing.
Detach to a Tablet or Digiboard
The whiteboard can be detached from the session into its own browser window. Click the expand button in the toolbar and the whiteboard opens full-screen in a separate window while the video session continues in the original tab. The two stay synchronized — draw in the detached window, students see it instantly in their session. Click the attach button or close the detached window, and the whiteboard returns to the session seamlessly. The canvas state is preserved every few seconds, so nothing is lost even if the window closes unexpectedly.
This is where it gets practical for classrooms. A teacher can open the Simpleclass session on their laptop — video feeds, chat, breakout room monitoring — and open the detached whiteboard on a tablet with a stylus for natural handwriting. Or attach it to a digiboard (interactive display board) in the room, drawing on the large touch screen while students follow along from home. The detached window has the full toolbar: all drawing tools, shapes, text, images, the eraser, student drawing permissions toggle, and the clear button. It's not a stripped-down view — it's the complete whiteboard, just on a different screen.
Practical Use Cases
Math and science tutors can work through problems step by step, using shapes for diagrams and the text tool for equations. Students can circle the part they don't understand or draw their attempt at a solution. Language teachers can map out sentence structures, run collaborative vocabulary exercises with text notes, or upload images for visual prompts. For homework supervision, the whiteboard gives supervisors a way to quickly explain something visual when a student is stuck — draw the concept, explain it, and go back to monitoring.
The most important aspect is the integration. The video feeds remain visible while the whiteboard is open. The chat stays accessible. There's no screen share to start, no link to distribute, no "can everyone see my screen?" moment. For tutoring institutes, this simplifies the setup for their tutors — one platform, one interface, everything included.
The collaborative whiteboard is available in all Simpleclass sessions starting today, at no additional cost. It works in the main room and in every breakout room.