The Equation Tool: Maths Made Easy

[Updated July 2020: The Equation tool now includes a Graphing feature read this blog for all those details]

Today we're excited to roll out the first of our dedicated Mathematics tools. Naturally, Mathematics is a popular subject to be tutored and this has been one of the most requested features on Lessonspace! The Equation Tool can now be found on the Whiteboard tabs of any Space.

Creating Your First Equation

To get started, click the Equation Tool button, and you'll be greeted by a modal with an Equation Editor form.

Quick Shortcuts

Two of the most useful shortcuts you'll find in the Equation Editor are for generating properly formatted fractions and exponents. Simply typing / will put any preceding string of characters as the numerator of a fraction. Similarly, typing ^ (Shift+6 on most QWERTY keyboards) will shift the cursor up into the exponent slot for the preceding string of characters.

We've included a shortcut toolbar in the Equation Editor to give you quick access to common symbols you'd use in high school-level Mathematics, li pi, square root, and delta. Clicking any of these buttons will insert the symbol at the current text cursor position, or at the end of the string if the editor form isn't focused.

Editing Your Equations

Once you've inserted an equation, you might want to edit it again. That's easy! Just select and double-click the equation you want to edit, and the equation editor will open up again for you.

LaTeX Support

For those of you who like to get a bit more sophisticated (and are teaching more advanced levels of Mathematics or Physics) we have LaTeX support built in. So you can quickly type a shortcut with a preceding backslash, e.g. \integral, followed by spacebar, and have that symbol generated automatically.

For more LaTeX commands, check out this cheatsheet.

Send Us Feedback

We hope this tool makes teaching Maths and related subjects much easier. Try the tool out for yourself and let us know what you think!