By Anne Strychalski

The free, virtual studying and tutoring tool GoBoard.com was launched as an offshoot of TMS and was named in a contest held earlier this spring. More than 3,500 names were submitted by students at more than 110 colleges from the University of Alaska, to Harvard, to the University of Florida, to the University of Hawaii.  Entries came from all over the United States and countries around the world, including Denmark, New Zealand and Ireland.

In March, all collegians were emailed with the opportunity to participate, which is how Sasha Samoilov, San Francisco, heard about the competition. Nearly 10% of entries were from Delta Sigma Pi members. The winning name was also submitted by Cole Gabriel from the University of Florida. Gabriel and Samilov will share the contest’s $1,000 prize.

GoBoard.com has tools to help students draw and collaborate together. Wolfram Alpha solves complex equations right before students’ eyes, a graphing calculator allows students to graph together, and many other subject-specific tools are available. Students can add images from a web-image search, Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, Evernote, Instagram, and much more. If a student has written notes on a piece of paper, she can simply text in a photo of her work and to show on GoBoard. She and her friend can then write on top of the image to help each other better understand the material or the mistakes that may have been made in solving the problem.

“GoBoard combines video chat (like Skype) along with a collaborative drawing space.  And even includes various tools such as a graphing calculator and equation editor,” said Elizabeth DiMartino, GoBoard’s co-creator.

GoBoard was built in response to requests from students who wanted a free and easy way to either study with their friends across town or to tutor other college students across the U.S. GoBoard.com uses new open-source webRTC technology from Google which allows for peer-to-peer video. Since the video travels directly between two computers, not through a third party server, the video quality is better and there is no cost associated with the high-quality video delivery, ensuring that the service will always be free. Learn more by visiting GoBoard.com.