I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a three-day interview event for an alternative teaching certification program. One of the things I’ll be doing is presenting a mini-lesson to some of the other candidates and a few of the interviewers.
This lesson will be held in a meeting room at the hotel, so there won’t be any kind of chalkboard or similar. From a Q&A session:
My lesson is a subject in elementary algebra, so I’ll need something I can write a fair amount on; it’s not like I can get away with mostly talking.
Whatever I take I need to be able to fit in my laptop case so that I can take it on the airplane. The best idea I’ve come up with is to buy a pad of 24" x 16" chart paper, and tear the sheets off & fold them in half.
I’d go with the chart paper, personally. The white board might be a hassle to take with you, by car or by plane. Plus it might be weird storing it. Unless, of course, you’re worried about your handwriting on chart paper. In college (just a few years ago) I volunteered in various classrooms teaching International Relations subjects and I always appreciated chart paper to anything else.
There are white boards made in all sorts of shapes and sizes. You can also go to Home Despot and get a piece of white wall panel that will work fine. A sheet of lexan or plexi-glass with some white paper stuck on the back should work too.
You could call hotel and see what the fee is for them to bring you a whiteboard.
Might be cheaper and easier than buying one locally. The white board sheets only have a bit of adhesive at the top, so they really are designed for you to use them on the easel pad and then stick them up on wall for reference. If you try to write on them stuck to wall if you have to erase or if you write energetically, it might fall down or flap.
A decent hotel will have both easel pads and portable white boards.
Unfortunately, buying something in town isn’t an option, as I won’t have time. I’ll arrive in town tomorrow at 3:40 and have to be at the welcome dinner at the hotel by 6:00, so I’ll have to hustle to the hotel, check in, get dressed… Then Saturday we start at 9:00AM and may go as late as 9:00PM.
As far as the hotel having easels or whiteboards, I would think if that was an option the event organizers would have taken care of it for us. I’ll be just one of 30 or 40 people giving a lesson, in several rooms simultaneously.
The roll-up whiteboard is an interesting thought, but the one linked to is too big. Some of the dry erase rolls shown further down might work - would Staples or Office Depot carry something like that?
I also plan to take a roll of tape and not rely on any adhesive properties of whatever I wind up using. If the event organizers aren’t going to provide for us, I certainly hope they won’t ding us on things like tape, or the sheets possibly falling off the wall.