I get the roll your own whiteboard stuff, as well as stick on coordinate paper, which works really well–a bit longer to erase, but Kaboom! is always there in an emergency. I was going to buy the showerboard stuff, but have decided to paint my back wall with white board paint–it will cost less than $100 plus, you know, coolness factor and more square footage.

As for acquisition: I always insist on at least two large ones in my room. I bought the roll your own–about $100, and I’ve barely made a dent–and then I’ve, er, borrowed the smaller ones from various schools I’ve worked at because they were sitting in dark dusty corners with “DO NOT ERASE 05/10/02” on them.

You can see a lot of them on display in this project: https://hypersensitivecranky.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/halloween-candy/ They’ve been hung up since then, though.

I would like to put roll your own whiteboard on the student desks, but haven’t gotten brave enough yet. Mainly, I’d probably yell at the students for peeling it off.

Re: Learners using their own smartphones — In f2f learning activities I’ve found mobile devices to be more distracting than productive for various reasons.

I also think that documenting the process of learning is important so that learners can reflect on them (one of the core principles of the Reggio Emilia approach, among others). A class/group only needs one set of documentation but all learners must have access to it (to reflect on it and refer back to it). Leaving that up to learners to organise themselves tends to be chaotic and insufficient. I’ve found it more reliable to have one person who’s responsible for documenting and sharing learning processes for each class/group, which in itself is an important “life-skill” to acquire. In addition, it’s important to consider learners’ privacy so that they can make mistakes, ask questions, which in retrospect appear naive or stupid (it’s part of the learning process), in confidence without the fear of it being out on the web for all the world to see.

Documentation requires careful, organised, consistent management and curation.

I am pretty lucky – my classroom has a Smartboard and whiteboards covering two walls (including one wall of sliding whiteboards for writing/covering). With that $1000, I’d make sure I had plenty of whiteboard *markers* so that we wouldn’t have to scrounge around every time one dried up.

I had a classroom full of chalkboards. I bought a few tubes of adhesive glue and panels of showerboards, and glued the showerboard panels directly over the chalkboard (and my principal said it was ok!). I had to trim some of the lengths, I believe, and the edges are not beautiful, but you can cover the seams with tape or printed border and it looks fine.

Functionally, it’s terrific.

(Of course, a webcam was just fine for my purposes. I didn’t need anything fancy to watch myself and my kiddos.)