The Verdict Software whiteboards
When starting using whiteboard software, you’ll probably begin by using it for taking notes. This means you’ll find even the simplest choice here adequate. Once you want to start annotating documents, you run into limitations using the simplest of tools. Not all support importing PDFs, which you’ll need when going through reports. Mind you, with Rnote, you already have that and it’s still in early development. Rainbow and Lorien lack this support, so will only be of interest to people who also want to contribute and have their own way.
Because of its many features and strength at teaching, we have a clear winner: OpenBoard. Developed by a university for the teaching staff, it has many contributors who teach and learn. They also use it in their own teaching, and it even contains quiz modules, and custom modules that you can add yourself using JavaScript. If you want a powerful tool to teach and explain things, this should be your first port of call.
As you start using whiteboard software, you’ll soon discover if you need to export to other formats. For this, you have universal support for images, but PDF use is limited. You can choose to have an infinite scroll, or better still, use pages that split your efforts up into pieces. Like a slideshow, you can use this for presentations. Oddly enough, there’s no export option to formats such as Impress or other slide-show solutions.
To share your creations, OpenBoard has a presentation mode that shows the result on a separate screen, presumably the bigger screen in the room. None of the packages can share straight to a video conference, though. You must do this by sharing your screen in some other solution. The other programs don’t have multi-screen presentation modes, and neither do they have multi-user modes that would enable several contributors to scribble ideas simultaneously.
As you explore this class of program you’ll soon notice whether you’re making it easier to take notes or you want to show your work to an audience. For notes only, you can pick the simplest and leave it at that but when you need to present to others, you’ll need more advanced solutions. Consider what you want to do. Perhaps Lorien as the smallest of the five on test here is the most interesting because it uses Godot3. If you want to know more about animating and building games, you would be wise to invest your time in this small project.