Microsoft Whiteboard for EDU will bring collaboration to the classroom

Four months on from its launch on Windows 10, Microsoft Whiteboard is now setting its sights on the classroom. Microsoft today announced Whiteboard for EDU, a new push to bring the collaborative freeform inking app to teachers and students with a set of added features built with students in mind.

Whiteboard for EDU will work just as the standard Whiteboard app does, allowing students and teachers to work together on an open canvas to brainstorm ideas and work on projects in real time. But where the EDU edition excels is with a new set of classroom-focused features, including the ability to export boards directly to OneNote Class Notebooks. The background color for each board can also be changed to a new blackboard mode, and different line styles can be added for writing and graphing.

Whiteboard for EDU will also be able to recognize handwriting and automatically convert the ink to be more legible. Perhaps most impressively, you'll also be able to convert pictures of analog notes you've taken to digital ink with a new feature called "Ink Grab."

Taking the magical simplicity of an analog whiteboard and adding interactive, collaborative technology, Microsoft Whiteboard for Education gives the whole class a new space to engage, ideate, and create. Teachers and students can brainstorm and grow ideas on this limitless canvas, coming together on lessons, projects, and more.

Microsoft says that Whiteboard for EDU will launch "soon" on Windows 10 and iPad, but there's no specific release date yet. For more, you can follow the Whiteboard for EDU Facebook group to be notified when it goes live.

Today's Whiteboard news also comes alongside another major education push from Minecraft, which this week officially launched its Code Builder update. Once you've downloaded the update, Minecraft: Education Edition can be used to teach kids how to code within the blocky world of Minecraft.