I, too, am a firm believer in whiteboards. When I owned my own home, I had a huge one on the wall in my home office (picked up dirt cheap, i.e. free, when I "repurposed" it out of a rubbish skip). When I used to be a technical trainer, if I was using a projector to display my monitor for the class, I loved projecting it onto a whiteboard, so that I could mark up the display with marker pens, *and* annotate in the margins around the projection area. And, at my last job (at a software development company) all of the walls were whiteboards - and did they *ever* get used.

So, I class whiteboards as an essential piece of technology - the right tool for the right purpose.

(I've also used glass windows and mirrors, when pukka whiteboards weren't immediately to hand - I'm not fussy!)

Blog: Multidimensional.Me

Whiteboards are something that schools were forced to adapt after every classroom had computers which would be bothered by the chalk dust. Certainly they are most visually appealing and easier to write on that chalkboards. But as far as things wiping right off, that will not last if you have people who use their fingers to wipe off the writing (as the fourth graders are so apt to do). When the board is touched it leaves a tiny deposit of oil which eventually will make it necessary to use cleaning solvent that you spray on. Hopefully in an all-adult environment this can be avoided. Have fun.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Of both whiteboards and of Laura.

You know what else is cool (but messy) chalkboard paint. I have been meaning to do one wall of my office for ages. Then when you are mapping out ideas you can stand around like the guy from pi looking incredibly maniacally smart.

Also when you have a house-guest who pisses you off you can make them write lines.

ps: i loved your comment on the mapping thread.

Miriam
The Flink
"like harnessing a unicorn to harvest potatoes"

The youngest of our six loves her whiteboard almost as much as she loves rats and gameboys, which is quite a lot.

The oldest of the youngest says he loves his whiteboard but I think he only still loves it because he USE to love it.

The middle of the youngest does not love whiteboards because there's not enough room on them to write a novel.

I tried to convince the youngest of the oldest to cover her entire room or at least just one wall in whiteboard and another in chalkboard paint. She wouldn't do it. Instead she painted a mural on one wall that she just kept adding to for a few years. She just painted over it and again I tried to convince her white board was the way to go. She said no. I'm thinking we should cover the wood floors with whiteboard instead.... has anyone ever tried that?????

~Denise

***oldest/youngest guide to reading what I write. 6 children broken into two categories - the three oldest, the three youngest. Each child has a place within that category: oldest, middle, youngest. Jenn = oldest/oldest, Chris=middle/oldest, Michelle = youngest/oldest, Prince J= oldest/youngest, RJ= middle/youngest, E= youngest/youngest

I love this post and thank you for the links. It is so timely for me as I just bought a couple of small white boards to try out in my organizational aspiration mix and they rock. I'm going to get more and bigger ones. I just wish I could nail up some melamine sheets like you suggest.

Older technologies are still technology and they persist because they still work. Just because some new way of doing things comes along doesn't necessarily mean that the old ways stop working or that the new ways necessarily are more efficient. Different strokes, right?