Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: advice on classroom modifications



On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Tim O'Donnell wrote:

I moved into a new addition 3 years ago.
It has nothing but whiteboards.
At first I did not like them (inertia I think).
Now I like them them very much.
I tend to use colors more and the colors are
more easily distinguished from the back of the room.

My experience has been the opposite.

I think three very important factors are:

1. How heavily are the boards used?
2. How often and how well are they cleaned?
3. Were your old blackboards slate?

In our physics lecture classes, we use the boards very very heavily,
erasing them multiple times in each hour class. The rooms are also
typically used 4 or more hours in a row every day before getting cleaned.

The slate blackboards held up pretty well under those conditions.

The whiteboards, however, have been a different experience. After about 2
hours of heavy use, the whiteboard gets harder to erase. There is also
plenty of "dust" from the markers. (And unlike chalk dust, which tends to
just brush off, the marker "dust" permanently ruined some of my clothes.)

If cleaned well and appropriately, the whiteboards are again ok at the
beginning of the next day. However it was usually my experience that the
whiteboards were not cleaned well and appropriately. They were either
ignored ("they're dustless -- we don't need to clean the erasers every
day") or they were over-treated with some sort of chemical that made it
nigh impossible to actually write on them.

And don't get me started on the marker fumes :-).

--
Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042