In Praise of Whiteboards

I love whiteboards. Judging by my department and a recent post at Learning Curves, I must be the only one.

In our department, we have maybe 6 classrooms we teach in frequently, and there are maybe 6 or 7 more classrooms in the building. There is a whiteboard in just one. The college wanted to put one in the building as a trial, I was the only one not adamantly opposed. It went into the room I use more frequently than anyone else. I love this board.

In my defense, it is a very new board which appears to be very high quality, no one has done anything unforgivable to it (yet) and the surface is really in great shape.

And I can make graphs in color! Color! I love color.

I do have some advice for dealing with whiteboards:

• Bring your own markers, always. Take them with you when you leave. (Easy for me - my office is 10 feet from the whiteboard.)
  
  
• Do not use low odor markers without testing first - some are impossible to erase and leave a horrible film. Others don't. Learn to love the solvent.
  
  
• Never leave stuff on the board when you leave. Something happens after stuff is on for longer than an hour and getting it off is not pretty.
  
  
• Only use the cleaner when you have dry erased what you can and there is ample time for the board to dry.
  
  
• Bullet tip yes, chisel tip no.
  

Yesterday, I said to Dr. H. "No one seems to like whiteboards except me. Everyone else hates them." Turns out he prefers whiteboards too.

Weird, I thought. Is it a tech/engineering school thing? Is is that we both teach in rooms with good boards and everyone else has boards that someone has dragged sandpaper across? Are we the only ones who bring our own markers?

Then I realized: we both have super dry skin. When I teach in rooms with chalkboards, I spend about 5 months in the winter with borderline chapped hands. Dr. H.'s get so bad his skin splits.

As an added bonus, Google gives me 13K references for rhinitis and chalk dust. For whatever reason, the markers don't bother my nose nearly as much as the chalk dust.