Before your first session with a notebook, it helps to know exactly what your student sees on their side and which controls are yours alone.
What your student can do
Draw with the same tools you have — Pointer, Pen, Text, Eraser, shapes, Line, Arrow, Highlighter, and Laser pointer — with the same colors, widths, and text options
Mark text with the same marks you have, including text you have locked. On a touch screen, the marks are on their tool rail.
Type into blanks that you place with Text field. When they tap a blank, their tool switches to Text, and no style panel opens while they type, so every letter lands in the blank.
Type in bulleted and numbered lists that you start
Undo and redo their own work
Move, resize, and crop an imported worksheet page, but only while you have Adjust PDF turned on for that page
Your student's undo never touches your work, and your undo never touches theirs.
Your student's laser pointer starts in a different color from yours, and either of you can change it.
On an iPad, after your student writes with an Apple Pencil, their fingers stop drawing so a resting hand leaves no marks. A small pen icon shows just above their tool rail, and tapping it lets their fingers draw again.
What your student cannot do
Change, add, import, duplicate, move, or delete pages
Change a page's background or margins, which they see as you set them but only you can change
Add images or PDFs, place text fields, start a list, or lock content
Change locked content, including imported PDF pages. Locked items do not respond to your student at all, and a message reads "This is locked." if they try to change one
Pause or resume editing, or turn on Adjust PDF
Zoom or move the view
Open the notebooks list, rename a notebook, or close it
Clear the page
Your student sees the notebook's name and the page number, but only as information. They are not buttons on your student's side. Anything your student cannot use is left out of their window rather than dimmed.
What your student sees when you pause editing
You can pause your student's editing during a session. While editing is paused, your student's tool rail dims, except the Laser pointer, and the panel beside it goes away. A line at the top center of their notebook reads "Editing is paused."
Your student cannot draw, type, move, delete, paste, or undo while editing is paused. Their laser pointer still works, and you can see it. Nothing they made is lost, and their own undo works again when editing resumes. Editing stays paused until you resume it, close the notebook, open another notebook, or the session ends. See Using Lock and Pause editing in a Nearo notebook for how to use it.
How a notebook appears for your student
Your student has no button to open or close a notebook. When you open one, it fills the main area of their window and the video tiles move to a strip at the right. On a phone, the tiles float over the notebook as small tiles at the top left, with a Hide button at the top right and a Show button to bring them back.
While the notebook loads in the web app, your student sees "Tutor is opening a notebook…". If a connection message appears, it stays with the video tiles and never covers the notebook. If your student is in the floating window on the desktop app, they switch to the full window when you open a notebook and return to the floating window when you close it.
In the web app, your student's tool, zoom, and anything they are typing stay as they were when you start or stop sharing your screen or their window changes shape.
Your student's session controls are simplified: the video tiles, microphone and camera, chat, and Leave, with no screen-share control. In the web app, your student can press ? to open a map of keyboard shortcuts.
How your student's view follows yours
Whatever page you are on, and whatever part of the page you are looking at, your student sees the same thing. When you turn a page, your student's view turns with it, and when you zoom, your student's view zooms with you. Your student can pinch or scroll to look around, but their view springs back to follow yours. On a touch screen, two fingers pan or zoom and never draw, type, or mark.
Your student never sees the notebooks list. While you are browsing it, your student's screen stays unchanged — either the notebook that was already open, or the normal session view with the video tiles.
When you close a notebook, both of you return to the normal session view with the video tiles.