I have been thinking for a while that it must somehow be possible to use a tablet as a whiteboard in Zoom. It would be really nice to be able to do something like this for office hours. The advantage, of course, is that the tablet is made to be written on with a stylus, whereas using the Zoom whiteboard with the mouse is, in my experience, hopeless. (A high precision stylus definitely helps here, though.)
Turns out it is quite simple to do this.The key is that it is possible to sign into Zoom, with the same account, more than once.
So, to try this out:
- Start a Zoom meeting from your main computer.
- Launch Zoom on your tablet and 'join' that same meeting, using the same login you used when you started the meeting. Tell Zoom not to start your video or audio. (That will already be working from the other device. It's just weird to see yourself twice. Trust me.)
- Now start screen sharing on your tablet and choose "Whiteboard". (On my tablet, I can also share my 'Screen' and thereby share any other app, though this is quite slow.)
Note that, even if you have limited screen sharing to 'host only', this will work, since you are the host and are just signed in twice. And you absolutely should be limiting screen sharing, as a security measure.
This later post discusses how to use the whiteboard.
