Why I built a free browser-based whiteboard for teachers and homeschool parents (and I’d love your feedback)
It was 9:12 a.m. last October, and I was staring at a loading screen that wouldn’t load. My 4th grade class was supposed to be starting fractions, 28 kids sitting on the rug in front of my interactive whiteboard, the kid in the back already chewing on the hem of his sweatshirt. The fancy whiteboard tool our district paid for had locked me out again—some glitch with the single-sign on that the tech department couldn’t fix over chat. By the time I pulled up a free alternative, a full-page ad for a weight-loss tea popped up right in the middle of my lesson, and I fumbled to close it while the kids whooped. That day, I decided I’d build my own.
I’ve been teaching elementary school for 8 years, and I’ve tried almost every whiteboard tool out there. The paid options are too expensive for most small schools, after-school programs, or homeschool families working with a tight budget. The free ones require every student to make an account with an email, fill the screen with distracting ads, or load up on 100 fancy features I’ve never once used in a lesson. I took a couple of computer science classes in college before I switched to education, so I started messing around with code after school, sitting at my kitchen table while my own 10-year-old did his homework across from me. After six months of slow tweaking, I got something I actually use every day now: I called it Classboard.
It’s 100% browser-based, so no one has to download anything, no mandatory updates to install mid-lesson when you’re already running behind. You don’t need an account to make a board or join one. Just go to the site, click “new board”, and start. If you’re sharing with kids, other teachers, or family, just copy the link and send it—no passwords to remember, no personal data collected, which is a huge relief for anyone who worries about kid privacy online.
I built every feature around the small headaches I deal with every week that other tools ignore. For example, I added the option to upload a PDF or image and lock it as a background. How many times have I uploaded a pre-made fraction grid or story map template, only for a curious kid to accidentally click and drag the whole thing mid-lesson, erasing 20 minutes of group work? Now I just lock the background, and all writing and drawing stays on top, no accidental moves. You can change pen size and color, add text boxes for kids who struggle with messy handwriting, drag and drop photos from your computer, and every change saves automatically. When the lesson or activity is done, you can download the whole board as a PDF to post to your class page, or leave the link up for kids to revisit it later.
I didn’t just build it for classroom teachers, either. My sister homeschools her two middle schoolers, and she used it last month to map out a Civil War history timeline across an infinite canvas. She said it was way easier than taping three feet of construction paper to the dining room wall, and she could save the link to come back to it each week without it getting pinned under a pile of math worksheets. My son used it to play Pictionary with his grandma over Christmas break, after she couldn’t figure out how to download the app my niece suggested. She just clicked the link and started drawing, no hassle.
The thing that doesn’t get talked about much with educational technology is that most of it is built by people who have never had to manage a room full of restless 9-year-olds waiting for you to fix the tech. Sales teams show off all the flashy integrations and 3D features that look good in a demo, but most days, I just need a blank space to write that works right away. I left all the extra stuff out. Classboard is just a whiteboard, nothing more. That’s the point.
Right now it’s still new, and I’ve only tested it with the three other 4th grade teachers at my school and a couple of homeschool friends, so I know there are gaps I haven’t spotted. I’m debating whether to add a feature that lets you split one lesson into multiple small-group boards, but I don’t want to clutter the clean main page if most people don’t actually need it. I’ve tested basic screen reader compatibility, but I know I’m missing adjustments that would help kids with different needs—like bigger default text for kids with low vision, or more high-contrast color options that I haven’t thought of because I don’t encounter those barriers every day. Last month I found a bug that erased a whole practice social studies board I was testing, and I fixed it, but there are almost certainly more small glitches hiding that I haven’t run into yet.
I’m not looking to turn this into a big business or charge anyone for it. It’s free, and it always will be, because I know how tight budgets are for schools and families right now. I built it to fix my own daily headache, but I’d love more teachers, homeschool parents, and caregivers to try it, and tell me what works, what doesn’t, and what you wish it did that it doesn’t right now. It won’t be perfect, but I want it to be useful—something you can open when you need a whiteboard in 10 seconds, no fuss, no hassle. That’s all I really want out of it.
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