The Whiteboard: Underdog of the Classroom

Have you ever been in a classroom without a whiteboard (or a blackboard)? As a teacher in the digital age, we can teach without projectors, without speakers, without TVs, and without the internet, even though sometimes we think we cannot.


Inspired by a chat I've been having with fellow teachers, we think that sometimes we take for granted the most essential technological tool in the classroom - the whiteboard. There are many advantages to using a whiteboard in the classroom often forgotten by our race to keep up with the times.

To highlight one from the article listed below, whiteboards are participatory. They allow for not only the teacher to write the agenda/outcomes, keywords, formulas, or facts that need emphasis, but also the students in class. Students can use it to draw diagrams, graphs, or any other visual to explain concepts and situations. Whiteboards are also essential brainstorming, mind-mapping, and team note-taking.

There are quite a few fun educational activities that can be done in a language classroom involving races like:
  • word formation races where the first team to write the adjective form of the noun wins, for example
  • error correction races where the team to write the correct sentence (from the paper they have received containing an error) on the board wins
  • sequencing races where students put the items of a process in the correct order taped or written on the board first
  • vocabulary races where students write the word for the definition the teacher has read aloud first

There are also other advantages in using whiteboards listed on this website:
whiteboard advantages

I invite you and your students to use your whiteboard as a tool for collaboration and participation, and find other ways to use it to its full potential. Imagine what your classroom would be like without one.

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