Draw and annotate in mid-air with your hand while you face your class or your camera. No stylus to buy, no tablet to pass around, no software for anyone to install — a webcam and a browser tab.
Works on a laptop, a classroom PC or a phone.
Free · no account · works in seconds
Teaching online broke something small and important: the ability to draw while facing the people you are teaching.
Not a replacement for every board — a better fit for particular moments.
Sketch the triangle, the circuit or the flow while still looking at your class. The drawing and your face share the frame.
Point at what matters and circle it as you speak. Emphasis lands harder when it is drawn in the moment.
Export a timelapse of a worked example for revision, or for students who could not attend.
For computing and STEM classes, the tool is itself the lesson — hand tracking, landmarks and gesture recognition, running live.
Handing the gesture over to a student puts them physically in the lesson, which is hard to do through a shared screen.
A borrowed laptop in a different building works exactly the same, because there is nothing installed on it.
A whiteboard for teachers earns its place in the moments where drawing while talking matters most. Here are six — one per subject — and the board below draws each in turn.
Sketch the triangle, then circle the angle you are asking about. Graphs, number lines and fraction pies all work at board size.
Draw the circuit while you explain which way the current flows, then add the bulb and ask what happens when the loop breaks.
A cell, a heart, a leaf — label each part as you name it, still facing the class.
Show letter formation with arrows for the stroke order, or underline and annotate a sentence live.
A rough coastline, the arrows of a route, a timeline that grows from left to right.
Demonstrate a line, a shape or a quick perspective sketch big enough for the back row — then hand the gesture to a student.
The same page works in all three; what changes is where the screen is and who is watching it.
A laptop at the front, the board on the projector or screen, and you standing where the camera sees your upper body. Students watch the drawing and your face at the same time.
Open AirVA in a browser tab and share that tab or window in Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Students see the board; you keep facing your camera.
Record the board as a video while you explain, then export a 2×, 3× or 5× timelapse for revision or for students who missed the class.
The first minute decides whether the lesson feels smooth.
You want room to move your arm without leaving the frame. Standing slightly back beats leaning in.
Light on your face and hands, not a bright window behind you. Backlight turns a hand into a silhouette and tracking suffers.
Hold up an open hand, then pinch. This measures your hand so the pen goes down when you mean it — hand sizes differ, and a generic threshold fits nobody exactly.
Practise once before the lesson. Five minutes of drawing shapes is enough to make it feel natural in front of a class.
No accounts, no downloads, no class codes. If students are only watching, they need nothing at all. If they want to try it, each opens the page on their own device — there is no shared board, so every student draws on their own canvas, and nothing they draw is uploaded.
On school Chromebooks? The Chromebook page has a two-second check students can run, and a note for your IT administrator about camera access.
Worth knowing before you plan a lesson around it.
Dense handwriting is harder in mid-air than on paper, because there is nothing to rest your hand against. Write large, use it for diagrams, arrows and emphasis, and keep long passages of text on slides where they belong.
It draws on a flat canvas — this is 2D drawing controlled with 3D movement, not modelling in space.
It needs a working camera and a reasonably lit room. In a room where the camera cannot see your hand clearly, it will tell you what is wrong rather than sit there failing silently, but no software can draw with a hand it cannot see.
Still stuck? Open the canvas and try it — the thing answers faster than reading about it does.
Try it FreeIt is a drawing surface you control with hand movements read by a webcam instead of a pen, mouse or touchscreen. You pinch to write, point to move, and use open-hand gestures for other actions, so you can annotate while standing back and facing your audience.
For collaborative planning, use one — they are excellent at that. The difference here is posture and equipment. Drawing with a trackpad means looking down at your hands, and a stylus means buying and charging hardware. Drawing in the air means you can keep facing the camera or the room while you write, with nothing to buy.
No. If you are sharing your screen they need nothing at all. If you want them to try it themselves, they open a web page — there is no account, no download and no cost.
It runs in the browser with no installation, which is usually the deciding factor on a managed machine. It needs permission to use the camera, granted once per browser, and a reasonably modern browser.
You can export what you draw as a video, including a sped-up timelapse, which is useful for revision material or for students who missed the session. Screen recording or your usual conferencing tool will capture the board along with your voice.
No. Hand tracking happens inside the browser on the machine you are using. Frames are processed and discarded locally, nothing is uploaded, and no account exists to attach them to — which matters when the camera is pointed at a classroom.
It is well suited to diagrams, arrows, shapes, underlining and emphasis. Sustained small handwriting is harder in mid-air than with a pen, because your arm is not braced. Many teachers write large, use it for the diagram and the emphasis, and keep dense text on slides.
Yes — this one is free, with no account for you or your students. It is a drawing board you control with your hand through a webcam. For sticky-note workshops with a whole class, a collaborative whiteboard app is the better tool.
Yes. Open AirVA in a browser tab and share that tab or window in your call. Students see the board as you draw on it, and you can keep facing your camera.
No. There is no shared or multiplayer board: each device draws on its own canvas. Students can open AirVA on their own devices, or you can hand the gesture to a student at the front.
It runs in Chrome with nothing to install. The one setting a school controls is camera access for websites — the Chromebook page has a two-second check and a note for IT.
Nothing to install, nothing for students to sign up for.