In my classroom, I use whtieboards exclusively. I hate the feel of chalk on my hands. The real advantages, however:
I won’t use a chalk board. I never liked 'em, even when I was a kid. Couldn’t stand the feel of chalk on my hands. Also, they always seemed to “smooth out” and the chalk wouldn’t write.
I do remember my son performing poorly on an exam allegedly because he didn’t see that the teacher wrote on the grayboard that he had to write 2 essays. After talking to his teacher, I confirmed it. Still, I can’t imagine why they’d cost so much more.
Oh here we go with more bashing of capitalism. sheesh. It’s marketed as a better product, because it IS better - for all the reasons other posters have mentioned. People wanted a superior product so industry gave it to them at a lifetime cost that compares well with chalkboards. Go figure. If you buy a quality (read: more expensive) whiteboard and quality markers - they’ll last for years. As a software developer, I rely on whiteboards daily. I’ve been using the same whiteboards for about 5 years even though they were second-hand when purchased. I’ve also been using the same set of markers for about 2 years (only black has run out).
In college some of my elder physics and mathematics professors relied on the old chalkboards. It was an illegible mess.
Well, I’m off to have lunch with those “evil” whiteboard millionaires at the local country club …
A remarkably analogous situation. Why did the Coca-Cola company introduce the New Coke in the first place? Because Coke drinkers said that it tasted better. But when they took the blindfolds off, and people found out that they were changing their favorite beverage, the All-American Coca-Cola, they were furious. Tradition and inertia.
My boss told me that my university is planning to eventually replace all chalkboards with dry-erase (or whatever you call 'em) boards because someone discovered that chalk dust is a carcinogen.
Don’t know where he heard this, or if it’s accurate, but thought I’d throw this out there.
I passed chemistry because of whiteboards. We had a greyboard that would take both chalk and dry-erase markers. However, that got scragged in favor of a complete whiteboard. Using white and yellow chalk (the most common kinds) on a grey chalkboard is almost impossibly hard to read, even 3 feet away.
I love whiteboards.
MagicalSilverKey,
You said you find whiteboards difficult to clean. For those pens that seem to leave ghosting, and even somewhat for permanent ink, a can of aerosol AquaNet hairspray seems to work pretty well. You should of course use the supplied cleaner first, only substituting Grandma’s hairspray when needed.
Whiteboards are very difficult to clean if you use a permanent marker by mistake (why anyone would do that I don’t know). But, for some reason, the permanent ink can be removed quite easily by:
Scribbling all over the permanent ink using the dry wipe marker.
Rubbing the whole lot away - the ink from the dry wipe pen seems to take the permanent ink with it.
This is probably better for the whiteboard than using sandpaper.
My old boss had his office chalkboard replaced by the university, and this was the given reason, or at least that they worried about potential health hazards (although I suspect that it has more to do with avoiding future litigation). I’m sure someone will discover that whatever solvents are used in the whiteboard pens are also carcinogens.
My boss suspected that the reason they swapped boards was so that they would have to clean his office less frequently.
As a teacher who suffers from eczema and taught for his first year in two classrooms, on with a whitboard and the other with a chalkboard, let me tell you that I was very glad when in my second year, I was moved to my own room with only whiteboards…
Gp
One of the best substances for cleaning chalkboards is bottled Guinness.
Pour into a sprayer, apply to the board and wipe over gently with a sponge. This operation leaves a perfect surface for the application of chalk-based mathematical equations etc.
Whilst drinking the unused Guinness you may wish to reflect that the same agents which cleaned the board are now at large in your body.
All of the above is true.
IMO, this is the real reason for whiteboards. In my experience, any room with a chalkboard will survive exactly one important presentation. The first time anyone with any juice has to use the chalkboard for anything more important than tic-tac-toe, it will be replaced before the dust settles.
I gotta give a vote for whiteboards.
Cleaner.
Easier.
Clearer.
Etc…
(I’d elaborate on the etc…, but I’d just be repeating what everyone else has said.)
Oddly, though, at my college (RPI) most classrooms have chalkboards, and only the newer ones, or the renovated ones, have whiteboards. But since most of the profs. use projectors, and the chalkboard rooms all have the pull-down screens, we don’t have any problems with trying to read them.
(Actually, most of the profs. use the projector, but write on a projector screen on a roll, so to speak. When the screen is full, you turn thhe crank and new plastic comes out, when it’s full, it goes off to be cleaned, I imagine (I hope they don’t throw them all out.))
As to your question about whether they are being used in contemporary schools: I live in the midwest and, most of the public schools that I have seen have started going to white boards.
IMHO whiteboards are easier to use, although they do have to be cleaned with a cleaner periodicly to remove the marker stain that don’t wipe off.
As someone who was educated during the final years fo the chalkboard age, I never found it particularly difficult to read what was on the board, as long as regular chalk was used. But you had a mess o’ calcareous dust at the end of the day – and the low-dust kind of chalk just could never create the right kind of contrast (specially on the later-day green boards).
All in all it’s an appropriate adaptation to the new technologies in the classroom.
Though I seldom saw a chalkboard afflicted by the ghosts of presentations past (at least no further than last weekend’s washing) while half the whiteboards I come across these days are afflicted by this phenomenon.
(OTOH, ETS can have my #2 pencil whan they pry it from my cold dead hands…)
Progress,… @#%^%&@!!!
So, does anyone know what is done with the chalkboards when they are replaced with whiteboards at schools? I ought to see if I can get a second hand one.
What gave you the impression I was “bashing” anything?
Sheesh!
Whether whiteboards or blackboards are truly better is a matter of opinion, resulting from the expectations and requirements of each individual user. My description of chalkboards and whiteboards was merely to illustrate their relative lifetimes and costs.
Oh, and btw, slate chalkboards will last hundreds of years.
At my school there are still blackboards in the classrooms but they’ve recently switched over to a new eraser modality. The new erasers have an aqua-colored plastic back with a foam rubber insert, and over that they’ve got a layer of suede–I never examined it closely, but it looks and feels like real leather: they’ve got to be way more expensive than the traditional felt erasers. The suede part separates from the foam rubber part and falls off about three weeks into the life of the eraser. Anyway, brand new or falling apart these Do. Not. Work. They glide infuriatingly over the chalk line and leave most of it on the board.
In addition, custodial staff has taken to using a lacquer of some kind to clean the boards with, so that they have a shiny surface on which chalk can find no purchase. The administration seems to be trying to phase us in to whiteboards gradually by eliminating the sensory charms of the blackboard one by one. They can never take away the prime advantage blackboards have over whiteboards, though, and that’s the racket you can make with the chalk: whak, whack, whack, whack WHACK! (that’s what C-H-A-L-K sounds like when you write it emphatically on a blackboard)
Sounds like they left up the chalkboards but replaced all erasing-and-cleaning supplies with whiteboard-appropriate ones…
Yeah, RPI certainly hasn’t adopted any sort of campuswide standard. They use chalkboards, whiteboards, overhead projectors, computers, and any other method available. Chalk is still petty common, moreso than whiteboards, IME, but less than overhead projectors.
That reminds me of the professor I had who would regularly stand partly in front of the overhead projector while writing on it. I believe he’s probably been using overhead projectors for over twenty years by now, and still he forgets that you can’t stand right in front of it.