KinBoard

Most domains of activity today greatly benefit from what a computer has to offer. This even includes education, with dedicated software components which aim to assist both students and teachers. For classroom enhancement, KinBoard comes as a virtual blackboard which is especially useful with touch-enabled screens.

The application comes in a lightweight package and doesn’t keep you busy for a lot of time to get it up and running on your computer. When done, running it brings up a large empty canvas on your screen wrapped around a classic window frame. Most of the space is the canvas, with a slim upper toolbar which shows all hotkey commands to manipulate brush and other elements.

Interaction is done with the mouse alone, and the keyboard needs to be used only to change the color of the brush, switch to eraser mode, or clear the entire screen. Drawing is done just like in any common paint tool. Sadly, the background color can’t be changed, but tints used on the brush create enough contrast so everything is clearly visible.

Customization leaves much to be desired. For starters, colors you can assign to the brush are pretty poor in number. The brush itself is only fitted with a fixed size value, and this also affects the eraser, which makes it incredibly difficult to remove unnecessary items or fix any possible errors. Drawing is freehand only, with no lines or shape tools.

The larger the target screen, the more space there is for drawing. With no zoom tools, you need to plan everything you draw to fit on the canvas. There are no save options, so every drawing is temporary.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that KinBoard comes with good intentions, but isn’t really polished to fully replace the classic classroom whiteboard. Drawing tools are poor, and so are customization options. With no possibility to save, everything needs to be performed on the spot.