OpenBoard — The Complete Guide: A Free Interactive Whiteboard for Engineering Lectures
OpenBoard is open-source interactive whiteboard software built for schools and universities. You write and mark up on screen with a tablet pen, a smart board or a mouse. For lecturers and engineers who train their team, it is a simple way to solve a statics problem, sketch a diagram or walk through a calculation step by step.
OpenBoard
OpenBoard (Canton of Geneva education department)
Interactive whiteboard for teaching and presentations — write on screen with a pen or mouse, for classrooms and lectures.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Free-hand writing on screen — with a pen, a smart board or a mouse.
- Lessons built from pages — prepare the steps of an explanation in advance and move between them.
- Images and widgets — place a drawing, a photo or a website widget on the page.
- Dual-screen setup — one screen for the presenter, a second one for the audience.
- No registration — install and start, no account and no licence key.
Who it suits
Anyone who teaches or presents: engineering lecturers, lab instructors, or a senior engineer explaining a construction detail to the team. In an online lecture you share the OpenBoard window like any other. On Linux only Debian is officially supported; other distributions have community packages.
Related tools
For handwriting on PDF files — Xournal++. For sketches on an infinite canvas — Rnote. To record the lecture — OBS Studio.
Xournal++
Xournal++ team
Handwriting and PDF annotation with a stylus — markups on drawings, lecture notes and problem solving.
Get it from the vendor
Rnote
Rnote project
Sketches and handwritten notes on an infinite canvas — mark up PDFs and images with a pressure-sensitive pen.
Get it from the vendorOBS Studio
OBS Project
Screen recording and streaming — software tutorials, model walkthroughs and recorded lectures in high quality.
Get it from the vendor
Excalidraw
Excalidraw
A virtual whiteboard with a hand-drawn look — for quick concept sketches, explaining ideas in calls and shared design reviews.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
OpenBoard turns any computer with a projector or a large screen into a digital classroom board. Open source and free for any use, including commercial work.