Answer Reveal Buttons — BlackboardView Support

Answer reveal buttons let you show a pre-written answer to your class exactly when you want to — perfect for asking a question, letting students guess or discuss, and then revealing the correct answer with a single tap.

How This Is Different from Hotspots

It’s easy to mix these up, so here’s the key difference:

A hotspot (??) is an empty spot you fill in live, during class, with something you didn’t plan in advance.
An answer reveal button (>text<) is something you write ahead of time, in your lesson file, before class even starts. There’s no “add a new one” option during a session — you decide the questions and answers when you’re preparing your lesson.

Writing an Answer Reveal Button

In your lesson file, write the answer on its own line, surrounded by > and <:

Example problem:
A 2kg block...
>F = 6N<

That single line — >F = 6N< — becomes a “Show Answer” button on your blackboard. See The Lesson File Format for the full syntax guide.

What Your Students See

Before you tap the button:

On your iPad, you’ll see a “Show Answer” button in that spot.
On the projector or external screen, nothing appears at all — no button, no blank space calling attention to itself, nothing. It’s as if that line isn’t there yet.

When you tap “Show Answer” on your iPad:

The answer text appears immediately on both your iPad and the projected screen.

Hiding the Answer Again

Tap the revealed answer text again, and it hides itself on both screens. This is a toggle, not a one-time reveal — so if you want to cover the answer back up mid- discussion (for example, to let a second group guess before confirming), you can do that as many times as you like.

Does This Reset?

Yes — but only at a specific point. Every answer you’ve revealed resets back to hidden when you start a brand-new teaching session (tapping Start from the Home screen). It does not reset just from flipping back and forth between cards during the same session — so if you reveal an answer on card 3, move ahead to card 5, and then flip back to card 3, that answer is still shown exactly as you left it.

Nothing Gets Saved to Your File

Unlike hotspots, there’s nothing to save here. The answer text already lives in your lesson file as the >text< markup you wrote — revealing or hiding it during class is purely a display choice for that session, not a change to your file. You won’t be asked to save anything related to answer reveal buttons when you exit a session.

One Thing to Watch For

If you ever write a blackboard line that happens to both start with > and end with < for some other reason — for example, a math inequality that spans an entire line by itself — BlackboardView will treat it as an answer reveal button instead of plain text, since the app can’t tell the difference. This is a known trade-off of using simple text symbols for formatting. If this happens, rewording the line (adding a word before or after, or breaking it onto two lines) will avoid the conflict.

What’s Next

Using Hotspots — adding new content live during class, rather than pre-written
The Lesson File Format — the full syntax reference
Text Styling — adding bold, color, and more to your revealed answer text