Whiteboards

Which whiteboard to choose? There are so many different brands of whiteboards out there. And it seems that these are gaining all kinds of steam around here. Plus there sounds like there could be more money flowing into our schools through the Microsoft settlement and the stimulus package that could increase the demand for this technology.

I remember about 7 years ago when several schools (including Lenox where I was the tech coordinator) got one of these boards. We put it into the ICN classroom and taught one teacher how to use it. There it stayed for a couple years. Then we remodeled and it went into a closet. Last year a teacher tried using it, didn't end up doing too much with it and now this year it has kind of taken off again.

A lot of schools in my area have been purchasing one of two brands. Either Promethean or Smartboards. I have a question to pose: Which is better and why? I like both for varying reasons, and tend to find myself favoring one one day and then the other the next. Right now I am putting Smart ahead. We recently installed one in our office and the more I "play" with it, the more I like it better. But Promethean also has a very nice board and software interface as well. Unfortunately I'm not having much luck connecting my laptop to the Promethean board right at the moment. I downloaded the newest driver a couple weeks ago thinking that would help. And it did for that day. Now I can't get the board to interact with my laptop the right way.

Of all the other brands out there, does anyone have one they like better than these two, why? I have found that the two mentioned are the top two selling boards in our area and across the nation as a whole. These are the two boards we are supporting. But not sure if there is a better one yet to come. This technology is something I've been excited about for years, but now am really excited. I've gotten my wife to use it in her classroom and she absolutely loves it. And she is not a technology person at all...Very easy to use and very easy to build current lessons into. Which makes it all the more useful and purposeful for our very busy teachers.