You may have noticed a few changes around Explain Everything and Explain Everything Advanced last week. That’s because we made exciting changes and added new features to help teachers work faster and create even more engaging lessons!  

Here are five features we think you’re going to love.  

Introducing Drag-a-copy   

One of the most popular ActivInspire features is now available on Explain Everything Advanced! Drag-a-copy allows you to create copies of objects on the canvas quickly. This can significantly speed up your lesson planning process, as you can now duplicate elements with a simple drag, saving you time and effort.

Here’s how to enable and use this great tool:

1. Select the object you want to copy with the Hand tool
2. Choose Drag-a-copy from the More ··· menu
3. Drag-a-copy locks the object in place, allowing you to create its copies by dragging it with the hand tool.

It’s a snap 

We’ve introduced snap rotation and snap to objects in settings, helping you quickly align and easily rotate individual or multiple objects. 

• Snap rotation: Objects automatically snap to commonly used angles when toggled on. This will help you quickly design your lessons by allowing you to snap objects to 0, 45°, 90°, 135° and 180° angles. The object types this setting works on include images, videos, documents and shapes. 
• Snap to objects: When this setting is toggled on, guides will appear to help you align objects together. This will let you precisely arrange the layers in your project. 

All together now 

Auto-group is here! Now, you can automatically group drawings and text. When the setting is toggled on, any new drawings or text will automatically group with the object(s) underneath it. This will help speed up your workflow and creativity. 

Cutout tool now features a Lasso (Freeform) option 

We’ve expanded the capability of the Cutout tool to include an all-new Lasso option. When selected, you can draw a freeform circle around the section of the project you want to duplicate and move it around your workspace. 

Improved design  

You may have noticed that we revamped the toolbar and design of your workspace. We aligned Explain Everything with the Promethean design, making moving between tools and quickly understanding where to find your favorite features much easier. 

We optimized panning and zooming for gestures, trackpad and mouse. Now, when you move your mouse around the canvas, a grid will appear in the background to help you design your project. 

Text now has a smoother editing experience with additional rich text options in the context menu. Shadows also expanded to more object types and now has an auto-shadow feature in the Settings menu. When toggled on, you can automatically add shadows to all selected object types, including images, videos, documents and shapes. 

See the Explain Everything release notes for all the exciting new updates.