wistful

Wow - that was quick! Thanks for the advice. (I was just revisiting this post as I realised I should have placed it under Hardware.) So while the surface looks like a normal whiteboard, the pressure sensitivity or whatever is affected more by regular pen usage than a normal board would be? Or is it just that with SmartBoards you can avoid the inherent erosion that would occur with a normal board anyway? No matter if there's no reply to this. I think the point is that the issue is chemical, not physical. Before that was pointed out, I couldn't see how the soft and fuzzy point of a normal pen could be harder on the surface than the relatively precise point of a SmartBoard stylus. David

Near the SmartBoard in my classroom there's a severe notice warning against using whiteboard markers on the board. But on an old SmartBoard doc I found on the web, it says it's fine. There's the normal advice about removing permanent ink - the scourge of traditional whiteboards. Is there anything about more recent SmartBoards that justifies banning the use of the board as a regular whiteboard, using regular whiteboard markers? I don't like signs that frighten teachers away from using technology. When they're already fairly technology averse, it's the last thing they need. Unless, of course, there are valid reasons for that prohibition. Cheers.

I don't mind having a dedicated forum for product sets like interactive whiteboards, because sometimes we have a problem whose solution might involve addressing one or more of the system components: hardware, software, firmware. Where should you place the post if you don't know where to look? I like the Unix idea of atomic storage which can be pointed to by multiple inodes. Or an approximate equivalent, the idea of 'tagging' a post so that it'll be accessible in multiple ways. You shouldn't have to classify your post into only one box, even though it may (if you like) have one "home" category. Anyway, now I need to find out where the actual forum is, rather than the discussion thread talking about its establishment.