Transform your classroom for $2

Congrats to my friend and fellow blogger Frank Noschese at Action-Reaction, for winning the 2010 edublog award for his post, “The $2 Interactive Whiteboard.” I’m particularly proud, since I nominated Frank with these words:

Frank Noschese’s blog post threatens to bring down SMART and Promethian products with cheap, actually useful and interactive alternatives. 42 comments later, this post is still going strong, and I’ve lost count of all of the folks on listservs and discussion groups that have been converted to the value of the $2 whiteboard.

Since I wrote this, Frank’s post has only gained more traction (and 14 more comments). If you read the post, you’ll find how a trip to a local hardware store and $26 bucks can net you 12 3’x4′ whiteboards that can truly transform your classroom. If you’ve got another $13 to spend, you can make a set of 1’x1′ boards and have a personal whiteboard for every kid to replace the need for clickers.

Frank’s comments are filled with teachers from every discipline, math, history, english and more discussing how they use these whiteboards in their classrooms to solve problems, make concept maps, plan out papers and much more. Try them, and you’ll be amazed by the uses you and your students will find.

Having a set of these whiteboards is now something I consider essential equipment for every class I teach, just like desks and chairs, and it’s bang for the buck ratio is out of the park. And once you get going with this, be sure to check out whiteboards.posterous.com, which is a cool blog we’ve set up where you can email photos of your whiteboards to the blog for students around the world to check out (just email your photo to post@whiteboards.posterous.com).