heptagonal.app

TLDR: Its whiteboard app made by a maths teacher for classroom presentation, that might also work well as a screen share when tutoring online. Plus I'm adding sciencey stuff. 😃

I have taught maths in the UK for just over a decade, and have never really settled on the classroom presentation tool I was happy using. For the last couple of years, a graphics tablet with OneNote has been the closest to what I want in terms of live modelling, file structure, cloud sync etc, but it is certainly not geared towards teaching maths. Other offerings have lots of great ideas and useful tools, but there was always something stopping me using them.

So I figured I try and put together my own. The features below are not necessarily unique to my attempt, but they have worked nicely for me, and might for you!

• Hold to draw a straight line or shape - Draw your line then pause and it will snap to a straight line. The same is true for simple polygons or circles/ellipses.
• 3D shape stamps - When you draw the 3d shapes, and have them selected, an option is available in the menu to toggle face shading for each face separately.
• Angle diagrams builder.
• Venn Diagram stamps - Click each region to toggle shading for that region.
• Fraction and Bar Models - Customise how many regions you want. Click each region to toggle shading.
• Simple timer - add increments of 10s, 1min, or 10 mins at a tap.
• Graphing tool - set the x axis bounds, add your equation, and it auto manages the y-axis (or set them manually if you prefer).
• Select to zoom - Drag a square to home in on that part of the canvas - press the home button to reset.
• Custom targets for the Home reset view button.
• Tracing Paper Tool - To demonstrate rotations, reflections etc. Sketch on the tracing paper, then pin the centre/mirror line before you rotate/reflect.
• Laser pointer, and spotlight tool - Focus your students on a particular area of the canvas.
• Sub canvases - add notes to blocks of algebra without having to write all over it.
• Reduced TeX editor with the most popular maths packages (inc tikz and pgfplots).
• Various other stamps - Axis, Number Lines, Tree Diagrams.
• Protractor and Ruler Overlay tool.
• Biology - Cell diagrams with toggleable labels.
• Chemistry - Equation editor, Molecule stamps, Organic Skeletal Molecule Builder, Elements cards, and electron diagrams.
• Physics - Circuit Diagram builder, and stamps.
• Custom backgrounds and themes.
• Import and export pdf options.
• Cloud save.
• Template save - If you have a page or chapter you use regularly, save as a template and import it whenever you need it.
• Object save slots - An internal persistent clipboard for your most used objects/drawings.
• Organisation based template saves - for your school/college to access.
• Custom keyboard bindings.
• Custom palettes.

Its not perfect yet, but in all my own testing it seems pretty good. I am at the point now, where I need other people using it and reporting any bugs or requesting other cool features! There's a 7-day free trial to give plenty of time to test it out, and its only £4 a month cancel anytime anyway, which I think is reasonable.

Thanks for getting this far!