One of life's most pointless inventions - and I've got 30! (Berol A4 Drywipe Whiteboard)

Member Name: bruffyboy

Product:	Berol A4 Drywipe Whiteboard
Date:	30/03/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ????

Disadvantages: see review

Completing the trilogy of Berol Drywipe products, comes the A4 drywipe board. For those who aren't sure what they are, a dry-wipe board is the blackboard of today - a multi-use plastic board that you write on with marker pens, and rub clean with a wipe. I have one at the front of my class, and then come the little ones - the A4 boards.

In terms of a school setting, these boards are for student use. We tend to use them to allow students to plan their work or brainstorm ideas in a more interesting way than just writing in their books. The problem is, it's all very well having 30 white boads, but what about 30 whiteboard pens? We never have that many lying around, and if we give them out one each we probably won't get that many back. With this in mind, school use becomes almost pointless, and so I can only really see these working on a home setting.

These boards are good for writing down notes, memos, phone numbers etc, but they are also quite impractical to 'put up' anywhere: there are no fixings on the back, and because they're quite heavy they're not easy to hang up. They also look very office-like, with a dull grey border to their plain white surface. Looks wise, they have no appeal, and only have their practical function to 'sell themselves'.

In use, they are easy to write on, and easy to wipe off (you can just as easily use toilet or kitchen roll so don't spend out on a specific board wipe for such a small surface). However, when you have written something on it, what do you do with it? If your aim is to show what you have done, you need to hold it up (there's no stand).

All these bizarre issues combine in a product that isn't really practical for anything (certainly in my experience). For writing things down for personal use, I would recommend a pad of paper (use the back of a cereal packet if you're environmentally conscious). For group use, it's impractical to get so many board pens unless you're in a small group, so again I would recommend paper. Indeed the only real plus against other mediums is that you can easily get rid of what you've done, and re-use the board time and time again. Possible uses for kids art work come into mind, but I would have to say that my son's magnetic drawing pad thing (a bit like a more usable version of an etch a sketch) is much better, not leastly because you don't stand the risk of getting ink everywhere.

I'm sure some teachers will read this and say they use them all the time with classes, but I personally just can't justify buying 30 board pens for a bit of work you're going to get rid of asap anyway!

Summary: don't do it!