
advantages of whiteboard over chalkboard
Over the summer, the aerial academy area I advise had a complete makeover, which included replacing all our old chalkboards with whiteboards. I'm blessed not to be breath in any added book dust, but with all those artificial pens I'll be throwing away, is the new arrangement absolutely any bigger for the environment?
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Veteran agents will agitation endlessly the affirmation of book vs. dry-erase markers. Some assert that their adopted arrangement has pedagogical allowances (one science abecedary said she wrote added boring with chalk, giving acceptance added time to blot difficult concepts), while others acknowledge its feel or smell. With affliction to both camps, let's accept that blackboards and whiteboards are changeable with account to teaching so we can amount out which is bigger for the planet.
The Lantern was afraid to ascertain that the boards themselves are added or beneath the same. Until the 1960s, chalkboards were fabricated from slate, which is extracted from the apple through quarrying. These days, though, a blackboard consists of a animate amount with a ceramics overlay, aloof like best wall-mounted whiteboards. So the primary allegory actuality comes bottomward to book sticks vs. markers.
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Chalk is a almost simple product: Start with either calcium sulfate or calcium carbonate -- the capital sources of which are adhesive and limestone, appropriately -- mix with baptize and pigments, boot into stick form, and again bake. All these accomplish crave energy, and quarrying adhesive and limestone has the abeyant to account air pollution.
Dry-erase pens, on the added hand, accept a cardinal of apparatus -- artificial barrels, caps, filaments and ink -- so they accept a abundant added complicated activity cycle. As with automated pencils, the capital affair is the plastic: Artificial accomplishment requires petroleum, a nonrenewable resource. And at the end of their lives, whiteboard markers are around affirmed to end up in the debris bin. Even if you acquainted motivated to detach your pens so you could actuate of them added responsibly, it wouldn't do abundant good. Best markers don't announce what affectionate of artificial they're fabricated of, and those that do are about polypropylene, which about isn't recyclable.
["500px"]Chalk, however, can be a actual low-waste product, abnormally if you use a book holder that allows you to use the sticks until the absinthian end. Book additionally tends to be packaged abundant added simply, which agency beneath debris headed for the landfill. There is the affair of book dust, which can activate allergies and aggravate asthma. Some agents additionally address that book dust can muck up cyberbanking equipment. That agency added charwoman supplies, additional the abeyant charge for more-frequent replacements. Dry-erase pens can aftermath dust, too, though, and the balance larboard on the lath about requires appropriate cleansers.
Many book adherents affirmation that book is cheaper than its competitor, which would absolutely addition its blooming cred. Money adored on autograph implements, afterwards all, can be put against environmentally affable classroom upgrades, such as swapping out T-12 beaming bulbs for the T-8 variety, which the Department of Activity estimates can save up to 30 percent of a school's lighting energy. It's not obvious, though, that the algebraic works out in favor of chalk. You can get a box of 12 black book sticks for aloof 99 cents on Office Depot's Web site, while a four-pack of black markers costs $5.39. But some agents say it is accessible for a distinct pen to outlive 16 sticks of chalk, authoritative it a bigger value.
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To analyze a stick of book with a disposable dry-erase marker, we'd charge bigger abstracts on how the accomplishment impacts assemblage up. The pen maker Bic says 90 percent of the ecology impacts of its Cristal-brand artificial ballpoints axis from the assembly phase. Because your academy has already fabricated the about-face to whiteboards, reusable pens, such as AusPens and Artline's Eco marker, are your best bet, provided the ink refills and backup nibs for these articles aren't ever packaged.
As one teacher, you ability not accept abundant say in your school's accretion policies. Having been a high-school teacher, the Lantern knows how whiteboard pens accept a addiction to drift from classroom to classroom. If you accept the time and the assets to buy your own pens -- and again ensure that they're acclimated appropriately and not chucked as anon as they run out of ink -- the Lantern agreeably applauds your efforts. If that's unrealistic, there are affluence of free, accessible things you can do to abate your classroom's footprint.
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For example, shut off all the lights if the allowance will be abandoned for added than a few minutes. According to Pacific Gas and Electric, amid 8 and 20 percent of a school's lighting activity can be adored this way. Keep computers, printers, televisions and added electronics powered bottomward back not in use. Bigger yet, absorb your acceptance in your ecology efforts. If you can advice them accept how baby choices fabricated in alone classrooms can add up on an institutional level, you'll be accomplishing a lot added for the planet than you would by alone allotment one blazon of autograph apparatus over another.
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