DRY ERASE PAINTED WONDER WALLS FOR INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

Inquiry-based learning is a student-centered instructional strategy that focuses on having students pose and examine questions to gain new knowledge. Occasionally, inquiry-based learning may involve a teacher presenting a problem or scenario for students to explore and address. In all approaches to inquiry-based learning, student questioning and research are at the core of the educational process and dry erase painted walls (aka “wonder walls”) can strengthen that core.

Student inquiries, thoughts, and analyses are emphasized and promoted, with a focus on students’ views about a specific question or issue. This approach is especially effective for creating initial student engagement and then guiding students to go beyond fundamental knowledge to a deeper awareness of critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and inventive problem-solving. In inquiry-based learning, students may complete case studies, group projects, or individual research projects, among other tasks. Making in-depth links with the content studied helps students develop skills that will be highly valuable in their future academic lives and worldly careers.

In inquiry-based learning, students come up with questions on their own, seek answers to the questions through research, share their answers and the knowledge they gained, and then reflect on the learning process they experienced. Instead of the teacher always choosing the topic or questions related to a study unit, the students have the freedom to select the questions on the topic they wish to investigate, then pursue their research and present their findings.

Although several types of inquiry-based learning exist, they all have the same outcome. Students make use of open-ended questions to guide their own learning in line with their personal interests; make appropriate connections among details; and thus deepen and broaden their knowledge base and research skills. This approach to education relates to an aphorism by Confucius: “I hear and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” Inquiry-based learning allows students to genuinely understand the content they study and to increase their wisdom in the process.

What Are the Advantages of Practicing Inquiry-Based Learning on Dry Erase Painted Wonder walls?

The inquiry-based approach to learning arouses students’ curiosity and provides opportunities for collaboration, which in turn increases their engagement and excitement about education. When students feel they have ownership of the learning process, their interest level rises, resulting in a deeper grasp of academic content.

Instead of traditional pedagogy, which is often dominated by teacher talk, teacher questions, memorization, and recall by students, inquiry-based learning supports students in planning and implementing their own educational process. Teachers thus become facilitators, not dictators of instruction. For students of all ages, increased motivation and a genuine love of learning are the outcomes of this method.

Inquiry-based learning is also a great way to provide genuine differentiation; that is, adjusting the pace, level, or type of instruction in response to individual learners’ needs, styles, or personal interests. The inquiry-based approach also helps to build self-reliance and independence and nurtures students’ preferences and pastimes. In addition, recent research shows that inquiry-based learning boosts student achievement levels and evens out the playing field in schools with children of diverse socio-economic backgrounds and cultures. When students are surveyed, they typically say they prefer inquiry-based learning over traditional teaching methods.

The Dry Erase Painted “Wonder Wall”: A Powerful Inquiry-Based Learning Technique

One highly effective strategy for practicing inquiry-based learning is to create a “wonder wall” on your dry erase wall, where students can write “I wonder” types of questions about specific topics with dry erase markers. Here you can also post artifacts to stimulate further questions. Post-it notes can be added to the wonder wall if students come up with additional questions and ideas in class or when they’re outside of the classroom and need a handy way to record their thoughts.

After it’s populated with a sufficient number of artifacts and questions, the wonder wall can become a resource for determining the next topic of study for the class. When generating a wonder wall, teachers should emphasize that all student questions are valid. They should also encourage questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” response but instead lead to in-depth research by students.

Creating a wonder wall is a great strategy to use in inquiry-based learning, as it builds a space where students can do the following:
· Get themselves thinking on topics they want to learn about
· Share their learning experiences throughout the inquiry process
· Keep their ideas and questions visible to others
· Interact meaningfully with their peers on topics of interest
· Discuss learning goals, measures, and evaluation criteria
· Share the evidence and outcomes of their learning process.

Dry erase painted wonder walls are meant to be built at the onset of a unit and should be kept active throughout the unit as they are living representations of students’ learning. Begin building the wall when you first invoke students to start thinking about the topic the class will be studying. Students will examine the artifacts you post on the wall and ask questions about what they’re seeing. This sets the students’ prior knowledge in motion and prompts them to share their ideas with their peers in a knowledge-building cycle.

Artifacts can be Hung on Your Wall with GoodHangups

The artifacts used to trigger student conversations and interest in a topic may include the following:
· physical objects
· photos
· drawings
· copies of internet articles
· videos
· fictional stories

Many teachers like to use pictures printed in color, especially if they don’t have access to real-life objects related to the topic for the unit being covered. Lightweight items such as photos, drawings, and printouts of articles may be posted by using GoodHangups, an innovative new hanging system consisting of a magnetized sticker and a magnet that can be mounted on your dry erase wall without damaging the surface.

The Role of Student Questions is Key to Constructing Your Wonder Wall

The use of a wonder wall at the start of an inquiry unit stimulates students to think about a topic by allowing them to ask questions and providing them with artifacts. The next step is to have the class ask more questions. As mentioned, they can use sticky notes to write down questions about what they see on the wonder wall. Use these notes to help students keep track of what the class is thinking about.

As students continue to share their prior knowledge and questions, the wonder wall is gradually constructed. These questions are the driving force behind the inquiry-based learning process. Arrange the questions according to themes and then use them to come up with goals for learning and criteria for success.

At some point, you’re likely to find gaps in the students’ knowledge that will need to be filled through teacher-directed lessons. Post the questions next to the artifacts on the wonder wall, and throughout the learning process, answer the questions and keep track of those that remain unanswered. It’s through your students’ questions that inquiry-based learning and the wonder wall are developed.

Avoid Answering Questions during the Inquiry Process

While using your wonder wall, if students ask questions, it’s important to avoid giving answers and instead have the students add the questions to the wonder wall and then find the answers by themselves. Leading students through lessons to ultimately give them the answers is not what inquiry-based learning and wonder walls are about. With a wonder wall, students need to work to find information and shouldn’t expect to have an easy way out.

Later on in the unit, you may have discussions about certain topics, and you’ll have to explain various concepts. But you should do this together as a class. In this way, instead of teaching your students, you’re facilitating their learning by providing the tools to find answers on their own.

Through the use of wonder walls, teachers and students enjoy the freedom to build a learning environment that meets the needs of all class members. Thus, inquiry-based learning becomes an effective means to create a place where learners enjoy finding the answers to questions and sharing their knowledge with their peers.

DryEraseWalls

DRY ERASE PAINTED WONDER WALLS FOR INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

Inquiry-based learning is a student-centered instructional strategy that focuses on having students pose and examine questions to gain new knowledge. Occasionally, inquiry-based learning may involve a teacher presenting a problem or scenario for students to explore and address. In all approaches to inquiry-based learning, student questioning and research are at the core of the educational process and dry erase painted walls (aka “wonder walls”) can strengthen that core.

Student inquiries, thoughts, and analyses are emphasized and promoted, with a focus on students’ views about a specific question or issue. This approach is especially effective for creating initial student engagement and then guiding students to go beyond fundamental knowledge to a deeper awareness of critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and inventive problem-solving. In inquiry-based learning, students may complete case studies, group projects, or individual research projects, among other tasks. Making in-depth links with the content studied helps students develop skills that will be highly valuable in their future academic lives and worldly careers.

In inquiry-based learning, students come up with questions on their own, seek answers to the questions through research, share their answers and the knowledge they gained, and then reflect on the learning process they experienced. Instead of the teacher always choosing the topic or questions related to a study unit, the students have the freedom to select the questions on the topic they wish to investigate, then pursue their research and present their findings.

Although several types of inquiry-based learning exist, they all have the same outcome. Students make use of open-ended questions to guide their own learning in line with their personal interests; make appropriate connections among details; and thus deepen and broaden their knowledge base and research skills. This approach to education relates to an aphorism by Confucius: “I hear and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” Inquiry-based learning allows students to genuinely understand the content they study and to increase their wisdom in the process.

What Are the Advantages of Practicing Inquiry-Based Learning on Dry Erase Painted Wonder walls?

The inquiry-based approach to learning arouses students’ curiosity and provides opportunities for collaboration, which in turn increases their engagement and excitement about education. When students feel they have ownership of the learning process, their interest level rises, resulting in a deeper grasp of academic content.

Instead of traditional pedagogy, which is often dominated by teacher talk, teacher questions, memorization, and recall by students, inquiry-based learning supports students in planning and implementing their own educational process. Teachers thus become facilitators, not dictators of instruction. For students of all ages, increased motivation and a genuine love of learning are the outcomes of this method.

Inquiry-based learning is also a great way to provide genuine differentiation; that is, adjusting the pace, level, or type of instruction in response to individual learners’ needs, styles, or personal interests. The inquiry-based approach also helps to build self-reliance and independence and nurtures students’ preferences and pastimes. In addition, recent research shows that inquiry-based learning boosts student achievement levels and evens out the playing field in schools with children of diverse socio-economic backgrounds and cultures. When students are surveyed, they typically say they prefer inquiry-based learning over traditional teaching methods.

The Dry Erase Painted “Wonder Wall”: A Powerful Inquiry-Based Learning Technique

One highly effective strategy for practicing inquiry-based learning is to create a “wonder wall” on your dry erase wall, where students can write “I wonder” types of questions about specific topics with dry erase markers. Here you can also post artifacts to stimulate further questions. Post-it notes can be added to the wonder wall if students come up with additional questions and ideas in class or when they’re outside of the classroom and need a handy way to record their thoughts.

After it’s populated with a sufficient number of artifacts and questions, the wonder wall can become a resource for determining the next topic of study for the class. When generating a wonder wall, teachers should emphasize that all student questions are valid. They should also encourage questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” response but instead lead to in-depth research by students.

Creating a wonder wall is a great strategy to use in inquiry-based learning, as it builds a space where students can do the following:
· Get themselves thinking on topics they want to learn about
· Share their learning experiences throughout the inquiry process
· Keep their ideas and questions visible to others
· Interact meaningfully with their peers on topics of interest
· Discuss learning goals, measures, and evaluation criteria
· Share the evidence and outcomes of their learning process.

Dry erase painted wonder walls are meant to be built at the onset of a unit and should be kept active throughout the unit as they are living representations of students’ learning. Begin building the wall when you first invoke students to start thinking about the topic the class will be studying. Students will examine the artifacts you post on the wall and ask questions about what they’re seeing. This sets the students’ prior knowledge in motion and prompts them to share their ideas with their peers in a knowledge-building cycle.

Artifacts can be Hung on Your Wall with GoodHangups

The artifacts used to trigger student conversations and interest in a topic may include the following:
· physical objects
· photos
· drawings
· copies of internet articles
· videos
· fictional stories

Many teachers like to use pictures printed in color, especially if they don’t have access to real-life objects related to the topic for the unit being covered. Lightweight items such as photos, drawings, and printouts of articles may be posted by using GoodHangups, an innovative new hanging system consisting of a magnetized sticker and a magnet that can be mounted on your dry erase wall without damaging the surface.

The Role of Student Questions is Key to Constructing Your Wonder Wall

The use of a wonder wall at the start of an inquiry unit stimulates students to think about a topic by allowing them to ask questions and providing them with artifacts. The next step is to have the class ask more questions. As mentioned, they can use sticky notes to write down questions about what they see on the wonder wall. Use these notes to help students keep track of what the class is thinking about.

As students continue to share their prior knowledge and questions, the wonder wall is gradually constructed. These questions are the driving force behind the inquiry-based learning process. Arrange the questions according to themes and then use them to come up with goals for learning and criteria for success.

At some point, you’re likely to find gaps in the students’ knowledge that will need to be filled through teacher-directed lessons. Post the questions next to the artifacts on the wonder wall, and throughout the learning process, answer the questions and keep track of those that remain unanswered. It’s through your students’ questions that inquiry-based learning and the wonder wall are developed.

Avoid Answering Questions during the Inquiry Process

While using your wonder wall, if students ask questions, it’s important to avoid giving answers and instead have the students add the questions to the wonder wall and then find the answers by themselves. Leading students through lessons to ultimately give them the answers is not what inquiry-based learning and wonder walls are about. With a wonder wall, students need to work to find information and shouldn’t expect to have an easy way out.

Later on in the unit, you may have discussions about certain topics, and you’ll have to explain various concepts. But you should do this together as a class. In this way, instead of teaching your students, you’re facilitating their learning by providing the tools to find answers on their own.

Through the use of wonder walls, teachers and students enjoy the freedom to build a learning environment that meets the needs of all class members. Thus, inquiry-based learning becomes an effective means to create a place where learners enjoy finding the answers to questions and sharing their knowledge with their peers.

DryEraseWalls

Balancing Job Duties and Daily Life in the Work-from-Home Environment

Balancing Job Duties and Daily Life in the Work-from-Home Environment

Working from home can be a daunting experience, even for long-time telecommuters, and it often requires a period of adjustment to develop a productive daily routine. In the work-from-home setting, distractions invariably come up throughout the day, so balancing job duties, health, family, and personal interests can seem impossible, and the boundary line between work and personal life can easily become blurred.
In the current global environment, most people lack the time to make an easy transition to working from home and planning an organized home work schedule, with pressure from household duties being high and timelines to finish remote projects short. Many who work remotely also have to care for children or parents, creating a situation in which people are doing two jobs at once. This can lead to burnout if telecommuters don’t take the time to focus on their own needs and plan their lives efficiently.

With the work-from-home lifestyle becoming ever more common around the world, it’s important for remote team members to establish clear limits between work time and personal time. In this way, you can become more productive in job-related tasks and feel less stressed. If you fail to establish limits and systems that help you stay focused on what you need to do, you’ll not only be less productive but may also end up becoming overly fatigued in both your work and daily life.

Fortunately, there are specific steps you can take to create boundaries and thus help yourself be productive in both work and household tasks during this challenging time. The following are some practical suggestions to assist you along the way.

Shut the Door to Your Work Space

By far, the most challenging aspect of working from home is the lack of physical separation between domestic life and work life. When you go to a business office, you know it’s a place to work. When you operate from home, however, domestic and job duties inevitably run together unless you set up a designated office area and go there when it’s time to do work-related tasks.

A space with a door that you can close is ideal because when you close it, you can maintain some degree of separation from the people you live with; otherwise, if they have the chance to walk in and talk to you, give you a hug, or socialize, they will. On the other hand, when they see that the door is closed, it’s a cue that you’re working and need some time that’s free of distractions. It might even be helpful to put an “at work” sign on the door to make it perfectly clear you need to be left alone.

Incidentally, eliminating distractions also relates to the virtual domain, so it’s a good idea to turn off notifications from Twitter, Slack, and other messaging platforms.

Divide up Your Time

This step is important because it allows you to be more productive than you would otherwise be. In most cases, when people work from home, it’s hard to keep a strict 9-to-5 schedule, especially with homeschooling duties and other domestic challenges to deal with. More important is to create a plan about how you’ll go about accomplishing your schedule of tasks in the time you have available. And an ideal place to keep such a schedule is the large open canvas of a whiteboard painted wall. Here you can record all the activities you need to complete in a given day, week, or month, and easily change the entries when necessary by erasing and rewriting. The great size of a whiteboard wall allows you to mark all the activities on your schedule in large print, making them easier to see and interact with. Although, according to psychologists, large lettering is not necessarily an aid to memory, unusually shaped and hard-to-read lettering is, so you can use an odd writing style when putting items on your agenda to help you remember exactly what to do and when to do it. Recent studies have shown that people recall much more material in science, history, language, and other fields when they study it in a font that’s both unfamiliar and also hard to read.

You can divide your time into chunks that cover the entire day. For example, you might create a morning chunk when you can quietly do writing projects before other family members are awake then respond to emails and texts in the same chunk of time. In the afternoon, you can make a block for doing research or participating in meetings, with each task scheduled so that they don’t interfere with other activities.

Using this approach will also make it easy to prioritize the day’s projects. If a colleague wants to have a virtual meeting, you can just offer them a time during the next chunk of your schedule. And if an unexpected task comes up, it will either need to fit into the suitable block of time in your schedule, or it will have to wait.

Keep a Time Log

Open a new spreadsheet on your laptop or desktop and write the days of the week along the top. Include half-hour blocks from 5 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. along the left side, then record what you do every day in this time log: sleep, make breakfast, work, go out on errands, etc. Do this every week, 168 hours, then archive the log, open a new spreadsheet, and keep tracking your time usage with your log. If you continue doing this, the way you think about and use your time will undoubtedly change. In fact, knowing exactly how your hours are spent each day will help you become more efficient, and you may come to realize that even in a jam-packed life, there is still space for other activities. Knowing where your time is spent will allow you to reassign segments of time from mundane pursuits such as web surfing to meaningful activities such as reading literary classics or taking up a musical instrument.

Keeping a time log can help you realize that you have the chance to ramp up your involvement in personal interests. However, the most important outcome of maintaining a log can be a newfound sense of time’s abundance, the recognition that you have a full life and have time to do what’s necessary to make it even more meaningful. Gaining this sense of time’s abundance requires only a few minutes each day to keep your log up to date.

Plan When to Quit Working

Just as important as being deliberate about how you use your time is being deliberate about when to quit working. This means no more last-minute emails or text messages. Just stop. You’ll always have plenty of work to do, but if you don’t decide when to stop working, your life will become unbalanced. You’ll keep working and won’t have enough time for other tasks such as household chores that also need to be done. Quitting work doesn’t just happen on its own, and if you wait until you’re wrapped up in a major project to try and determine where to stop, most often you won’t, and you’ll find a reason to just keep working past your designated quitting time.

As an alternative, when planning your day, decide on an exact time to quit, and when you reach that point, stop, even if you have more work to do than you did when you started. Quit, and avoid thinking about work. Then the next morning, you can make a new plan to get the rest of the work done. Just be sure that your next plan also includes a time to quit, which you can write in large letters on your whiteboard wall to help you remember.

Dry Erase Wall Paint

Balancing Job Duties and Daily Life in the Work-from-Home Environment

Balancing Job Duties and Daily Life in the Work-from-Home Environment

Working from home can be a daunting experience, even for long-time telecommuters, and it often requires a period of adjustment to develop a productive daily routine. In the work-from-home setting, distractions invariably come up throughout the day, so balancing job duties, health, family, and personal interests can seem impossible, and the boundary line between work and personal life can easily become blurred.
In the current global environment, most people lack the time to make an easy transition to working from home and planning an organized home work schedule, with pressure from household duties being high and timelines to finish remote projects short. Many who work remotely also have to care for children or parents, creating a situation in which people are doing two jobs at once. This can lead to burnout if telecommuters don’t take the time to focus on their own needs and plan their lives efficiently.

With the work-from-home lifestyle becoming ever more common around the world, it’s important for remote team members to establish clear limits between work time and personal time. In this way, you can become more productive in job-related tasks and feel less stressed. If you fail to establish limits and systems that help you stay focused on what you need to do, you’ll not only be less productive but may also end up becoming overly fatigued in both your work and daily life.

Fortunately, there are specific steps you can take to create boundaries and thus help yourself be productive in both work and household tasks during this challenging time. The following are some practical suggestions to assist you along the way.

Shut the Door to Your Work Space

By far, the most challenging aspect of working from home is the lack of physical separation between domestic life and work life. When you go to a business office, you know it’s a place to work. When you operate from home, however, domestic and job duties inevitably run together unless you set up a designated office area and go there when it’s time to do work-related tasks.

A space with a door that you can close is ideal because when you close it, you can maintain some degree of separation from the people you live with; otherwise, if they have the chance to walk in and talk to you, give you a hug, or socialize, they will. On the other hand, when they see that the door is closed, it’s a cue that you’re working and need some time that’s free of distractions. It might even be helpful to put an “at work” sign on the door to make it perfectly clear you need to be left alone.

Incidentally, eliminating distractions also relates to the virtual domain, so it’s a good idea to turn off notifications from Twitter, Slack, and other messaging platforms.

Divide up Your Time

This step is important because it allows you to be more productive than you would otherwise be. In most cases, when people work from home, it’s hard to keep a strict 9-to-5 schedule, especially with homeschooling duties and other domestic challenges to deal with. More important is to create a plan about how you’ll go about accomplishing your schedule of tasks in the time you have available. And an ideal place to keep such a schedule is the large open canvas of a whiteboard painted wall. Here you can record all the activities you need to complete in a given day, week, or month, and easily change the entries when necessary by erasing and rewriting. The great size of a whiteboard wall allows you to mark all the activities on your schedule in large print, making them easier to see and interact with. Although, according to psychologists, large lettering is not necessarily an aid to memory, unusually shaped and hard-to-read lettering is, so you can use an odd writing style when putting items on your agenda to help you remember exactly what to do and when to do it. Recent studies have shown that people recall much more material in science, history, language, and other fields when they study it in a font that’s both unfamiliar and also hard to read.

You can divide your time into chunks that cover the entire day. For example, you might create a morning chunk when you can quietly do writing projects before other family members are awake then respond to emails and texts in the same chunk of time. In the afternoon, you can make a block for doing research or participating in meetings, with each task scheduled so that they don’t interfere with other activities.

Using this approach will also make it easy to prioritize the day’s projects. If a colleague wants to have a virtual meeting, you can just offer them a time during the next chunk of your schedule. And if an unexpected task comes up, it will either need to fit into the suitable block of time in your schedule, or it will have to wait.

Keep a Time Log

Open a new spreadsheet on your laptop or desktop and write the days of the week along the top. Include half-hour blocks from 5 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. along the left side, then record what you do every day in this time log: sleep, make breakfast, work, go out on errands, etc. Do this every week, 168 hours, then archive the log, open a new spreadsheet, and keep tracking your time usage with your log. If you continue doing this, the way you think about and use your time will undoubtedly change. In fact, knowing exactly how your hours are spent each day will help you become more efficient, and you may come to realize that even in a jam-packed life, there is still space for other activities. Knowing where your time is spent will allow you to reassign segments of time from mundane pursuits such as web surfing to meaningful activities such as reading literary classics or taking up a musical instrument.

Keeping a time log can help you realize that you have the chance to ramp up your involvement in personal interests. However, the most important outcome of maintaining a log can be a newfound sense of time’s abundance, the recognition that you have a full life and have time to do what’s necessary to make it even more meaningful. Gaining this sense of time’s abundance requires only a few minutes each day to keep your log up to date.

Plan When to Quit Working

Just as important as being deliberate about how you use your time is being deliberate about when to quit working. This means no more last-minute emails or text messages. Just stop. You’ll always have plenty of work to do, but if you don’t decide when to stop working, your life will become unbalanced. You’ll keep working and won’t have enough time for other tasks such as household chores that also need to be done. Quitting work doesn’t just happen on its own, and if you wait until you’re wrapped up in a major project to try and determine where to stop, most often you won’t, and you’ll find a reason to just keep working past your designated quitting time.

As an alternative, when planning your day, decide on an exact time to quit, and when you reach that point, stop, even if you have more work to do than you did when you started. Quit, and avoid thinking about work. Then the next morning, you can make a new plan to get the rest of the work done. Just be sure that your next plan also includes a time to quit, which you can write in large letters on your whiteboard wall to help you remember.

Dry Erase Wall Paint

HOSTING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING WITH A WHITEBOARD WALL

Hosting an Effective Meeting with a Whiteboard Wall
Holding a successful business meeting is a bit like landing a space module on the planet Mars. Keeping track of the seemingly infinite variables involved in the process appears hopeless, and conducting the perfect team gathering never seems to work out quite as you had planned. But unproductive company meetings aren’t as inevitable as they may seem. With the right communication tools and a touch of inspiration, you can conduct the meeting of your dreams every time you and your team members get together. One such communication tool is the premium whiteboard wall, which offers a highly durable and virtually endless space for presenting facts, expressing opinions, and coming up with creative ideas for product launches, marketing schemes, and the like.

Make meetings a team activity

To have your meetings become more than personal lectures by you, the organizer, it’s a good idea to take regular advantage of the distinctive viewpoints, experiences, and skillsets of your team members at all of your business get-togethers. Doing so can provide you with great opportunities to make your meetings more efficient, collaborative, and worthwhile, thus enhancing your company’s creativity, productivity, and bottom line.

Organize a Discussion

With the appropriate organization and guidance, collective dialog can bring about a more engaging meeting and generate more new and unique solutions to problems than a traditional lecture, even when a question-and-answer session is included. Devoting a specific segment of your meeting schedule to a brainstorming session is an excellent way to stimulate such group dialog. As the meeting coordinator, your job is to outline the goals of the session and to work in conjunction with your team to expand on ideas they come up with during the brainstorming process. With small groups, it’s easy to encourage free conversation among all the members present, but with large groups, it’s difficult. Thus, it’s more effective to separate the participants in a large meeting into smaller clusters then reunite them after a specific time period to discuss everyone’s ideas in the large group context.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall to Practice “Brainwriting”

Brainstorming is a key part of meetings where top-quality whiteboard-coated walls come into play. For both small and large gatherings, the quality of group discussions can be optimized by using the vast canvas of a whiteboard wall. In smaller meetings, a massive whiteboard wall provides ample room for everyone in attendance to brainstorm together through the use of mind maps, free association, and a host of other methods. In large meetings, however, it’s best to make use of the ample writing area of a whiteboard wall by first dividing the participants into small groups then asking them to use different segments of the wall to record their individual brainstorming ideas.

One novel brainstorming approach that’s popular today is known as “brainwriting.” In this partially nonverbal method, the participants use pieces of paper to write down three original ideas related to the session’s topic. Then after a designated number of minutes, the team members pass their ideas to the individuals on their right, who build from these ideas, adding bullet points, new creative approaches, etc. Next, after another several minutes, all the participants pass the pieces of paper again until the papers have gone all the way around the group. Once the ideas have made it completely around the circle, the participants deliberate and choose which ones are best suited for further discussion.

By ensuring that everyone has a chance to contribute and by removing the common bias favoring the first idea presented, this strategy helps alleviate two of brainstorming’s most significant drawbacks — lop-sided conversations and the anchoring effect, whereby people rely too much on the first piece of information presented to draw subsequent conclusions during the decision making process.

Brainwriting can be even more effectively performed on the vast open surface of a whiteboard wall. Instead of using small pieces of paper to write down ideas related to the session’s topic, participants can write their thoughts on separate sections of the whiteboard wall in large lettering for all to see. Then after a set number of minutes, each team member can move to a different part of the wall and build on the ideas written by the previous writer, adding as much creative input as they want. Next, after another few minutes, the participants move again until they’ve given their input on all the sections of the wall written on by the group. Finally, now that the initial three ideas and subsequent contributions of all the participants have been posted on the wall, the group can review one another’s thoughts and choose those that are the most interesting and worthy of further discussion.

In such an exercise, compared to the cramped writing spaces of notepaper, the vast area of a whiteboard wall promotes more intensive levels of creative thought. Individuals tend to feel freer to express their novel ideas when confronted by the large open-ended surface of a whiteboard wall. Also, using a smooth-flowing dry erase marker as opposed to a small pen also tends to stimulate people to freely bring forth whatever is on their minds. These qualities can be of great benefit in practicing brainwriting because having much more space to write on in much larger letters tends to trigger ideas that might not arise when a person is confined to using 8 ½” by 11” notepaper as a writing surface.

Make Use of Free Association aka Rapid Ideation

In rapid ideation, meeting participants write down all the ideas that come to mind in a designated amount of time before anything is discussed, analyzed, or expanded upon. When practicing this brainstorming technique, you’ll have to establish a time limit, or else you’ll risk losing the feeling of urgency among your team members.

This brainstorming technique can be helpful in avoiding the common problem of having an idea shelved before it has a chance to grow and develop. By letting all meeting attendees bring forth their thoughts before any critiquing begins, rapid ideation eliminates the premature quashing of potentially great ideas and lets them flow out without constraints. The time limit can also help to prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they even begin sharing it with others—a frequent brainstorming mistake.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall as a Medium for Visual Aids

Including finely crafted visual components in your meeting presentations can enhance communications with team members, making them feel more engaged and interested in the content you present. Employing well-produced slides and other high-quality visual media such as films and diagrams can help participants to better comprehend and feel involved with your material, and a whiteboard wall is an ideal surface on which to perform such visual work. Designing and conducting graphic presentations are becoming increasingly essential tasks for doing business in today’s high-tech world of telecommuting and virtual communications.

Record All Significant Ideas and Input for Current and Future Reference

When you do a virtual meeting presentation, you should make a habit of writing down all the significant ideas and data put forward by the attendees on your whiteboard coated wall for all your team members to view and provide feedback on as the meeting progresses. Then you can erase and add more textual content and visuals whenever fresh ideas and information come up. The large dimensions and easy visibility of the content on your whiteboard wall will enhance the quality of your presentations, your communications with team members, and your team’s note-taking during virtual meetings, thus helping you to develop your individual brand and professional persona and boost your company’s productivity and profits. Then, after your virtual meetings are finished, you can take pictures of the results that you and the team members produced on the whiteboard wall and send them to the participants and other relevant parties for future reference and input.

WhiteBoard Paint

HOSTING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING WITH A WHITEBOARD WALL

Hosting an Effective Meeting with a Whiteboard Wall
Holding a successful business meeting is a bit like landing a space module on the planet Mars. Keeping track of the seemingly infinite variables involved in the process appears hopeless, and conducting the perfect team gathering never seems to work out quite as you had planned. But unproductive company meetings aren’t as inevitable as they may seem. With the right communication tools and a touch of inspiration, you can conduct the meeting of your dreams every time you and your team members get together. One such communication tool is the premium whiteboard wall, which offers a highly durable and virtually endless space for presenting facts, expressing opinions, and coming up with creative ideas for product launches, marketing schemes, and the like.

Make meetings a team activity

To have your meetings become more than personal lectures by you, the organizer, it’s a good idea to take regular advantage of the distinctive viewpoints, experiences, and skillsets of your team members at all of your business get-togethers. Doing so can provide you with great opportunities to make your meetings more efficient, collaborative, and worthwhile, thus enhancing your company’s creativity, productivity, and bottom line.

Organize a Discussion

With the appropriate organization and guidance, collective dialog can bring about a more engaging meeting and generate more new and unique solutions to problems than a traditional lecture, even when a question-and-answer session is included. Devoting a specific segment of your meeting schedule to a brainstorming session is an excellent way to stimulate such group dialog. As the meeting coordinator, your job is to outline the goals of the session and to work in conjunction with your team to expand on ideas they come up with during the brainstorming process. With small groups, it’s easy to encourage free conversation among all the members present, but with large groups, it’s difficult. Thus, it’s more effective to separate the participants in a large meeting into smaller clusters then reunite them after a specific time period to discuss everyone’s ideas in the large group context.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall to Practice “Brainwriting”

Brainstorming is a key part of meetings where top-quality whiteboard-coated walls come into play. For both small and large gatherings, the quality of group discussions can be optimized by using the vast canvas of a whiteboard wall. In smaller meetings, a massive whiteboard wall provides ample room for everyone in attendance to brainstorm together through the use of mind maps, free association, and a host of other methods. In large meetings, however, it’s best to make use of the ample writing area of a whiteboard wall by first dividing the participants into small groups then asking them to use different segments of the wall to record their individual brainstorming ideas.

One novel brainstorming approach that’s popular today is known as “brainwriting.” In this partially nonverbal method, the participants use pieces of paper to write down three original ideas related to the session’s topic. Then after a designated number of minutes, the team members pass their ideas to the individuals on their right, who build from these ideas, adding bullet points, new creative approaches, etc. Next, after another several minutes, all the participants pass the pieces of paper again until the papers have gone all the way around the group. Once the ideas have made it completely around the circle, the participants deliberate and choose which ones are best suited for further discussion.

By ensuring that everyone has a chance to contribute and by removing the common bias favoring the first idea presented, this strategy helps alleviate two of brainstorming’s most significant drawbacks — lop-sided conversations and the anchoring effect, whereby people rely too much on the first piece of information presented to draw subsequent conclusions during the decision making process.

Brainwriting can be even more effectively performed on the vast open surface of a whiteboard wall. Instead of using small pieces of paper to write down ideas related to the session’s topic, participants can write their thoughts on separate sections of the whiteboard wall in large lettering for all to see. Then after a set number of minutes, each team member can move to a different part of the wall and build on the ideas written by the previous writer, adding as much creative input as they want. Next, after another few minutes, the participants move again until they’ve given their input on all the sections of the wall written on by the group. Finally, now that the initial three ideas and subsequent contributions of all the participants have been posted on the wall, the group can review one another’s thoughts and choose those that are the most interesting and worthy of further discussion.

In such an exercise, compared to the cramped writing spaces of notepaper, the vast area of a whiteboard wall promotes more intensive levels of creative thought. Individuals tend to feel freer to express their novel ideas when confronted by the large open-ended surface of a whiteboard wall. Also, using a smooth-flowing dry erase marker as opposed to a small pen also tends to stimulate people to freely bring forth whatever is on their minds. These qualities can be of great benefit in practicing brainwriting because having much more space to write on in much larger letters tends to trigger ideas that might not arise when a person is confined to using 8 ½” by 11” notepaper as a writing surface.

Make Use of Free Association aka Rapid Ideation

In rapid ideation, meeting participants write down all the ideas that come to mind in a designated amount of time before anything is discussed, analyzed, or expanded upon. When practicing this brainstorming technique, you’ll have to establish a time limit, or else you’ll risk losing the feeling of urgency among your team members.

This brainstorming technique can be helpful in avoiding the common problem of having an idea shelved before it has a chance to grow and develop. By letting all meeting attendees bring forth their thoughts before any critiquing begins, rapid ideation eliminates the premature quashing of potentially great ideas and lets them flow out without constraints. The time limit can also help to prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they even begin sharing it with others—a frequent brainstorming mistake.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall as a Medium for Visual Aids

Including finely crafted visual components in your meeting presentations can enhance communications with team members, making them feel more engaged and interested in the content you present. Employing well-produced slides and other high-quality visual media such as films and diagrams can help participants to better comprehend and feel involved with your material, and a whiteboard wall is an ideal surface on which to perform such visual work. Designing and conducting graphic presentations are becoming increasingly essential tasks for doing business in today’s high-tech world of telecommuting and virtual communications.

Record All Significant Ideas and Input for Current and Future Reference

When you do a virtual meeting presentation, you should make a habit of writing down all the significant ideas and data put forward by the attendees on your whiteboard coated wall for all your team members to view and provide feedback on as the meeting progresses. Then you can erase and add more textual content and visuals whenever fresh ideas and information come up. The large dimensions and easy visibility of the content on your whiteboard wall will enhance the quality of your presentations, your communications with team members, and your team’s note-taking during virtual meetings, thus helping you to develop your individual brand and professional persona and boost your company’s productivity and profits. Then, after your virtual meetings are finished, you can take pictures of the results that you and the team members produced on the whiteboard wall and send them to the participants and other relevant parties for future reference and input.

WhiteBoard Paint

HOSTING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING WITH A WHITEBOARD WALL

Hosting an Effective Meeting with a Whiteboard Wall
Holding a successful business meeting is a bit like landing a space module on the planet Mars. Keeping track of the seemingly infinite variables involved in the process appears hopeless, and conducting the perfect team gathering never seems to work out quite as you had planned. But unproductive company meetings aren’t as inevitable as they may seem. With the right communication tools and a touch of inspiration, you can conduct the meeting of your dreams every time you and your team members get together. One such communication tool is the premium whiteboard wall, which offers a highly durable and virtually endless space for presenting facts, expressing opinions, and coming up with creative ideas for product launches, marketing schemes, and the like.

Make meetings a team activity

To have your meetings become more than personal lectures by you, the organizer, it’s a good idea to take regular advantage of the distinctive viewpoints, experiences, and skillsets of your team members at all of your business get-togethers. Doing so can provide you with great opportunities to make your meetings more efficient, collaborative, and worthwhile, thus enhancing your company’s creativity, productivity, and bottom line.

Organize a Discussion

With the appropriate organization and guidance, collective dialog can bring about a more engaging meeting and generate more new and unique solutions to problems than a traditional lecture, even when a question-and-answer session is included. Devoting a specific segment of your meeting schedule to a brainstorming session is an excellent way to stimulate such group dialog. As the meeting coordinator, your job is to outline the goals of the session and to work in conjunction with your team to expand on ideas they come up with during the brainstorming process. With small groups, it’s easy to encourage free conversation among all the members present, but with large groups, it’s difficult. Thus, it’s more effective to separate the participants in a large meeting into smaller clusters then reunite them after a specific time period to discuss everyone’s ideas in the large group context.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall to Practice “Brainwriting”

Brainstorming is a key part of meetings where top-quality whiteboard-coated walls come into play. For both small and large gatherings, the quality of group discussions can be optimized by using the vast canvas of a whiteboard wall. In smaller meetings, a massive whiteboard wall provides ample room for everyone in attendance to brainstorm together through the use of mind maps, free association, and a host of other methods. In large meetings, however, it’s best to make use of the ample writing area of a whiteboard wall by first dividing the participants into small groups then asking them to use different segments of the wall to record their individual brainstorming ideas.

One novel brainstorming approach that’s popular today is known as “brainwriting.” In this partially nonverbal method, the participants use pieces of paper to write down three original ideas related to the session’s topic. Then after a designated number of minutes, the team members pass their ideas to the individuals on their right, who build from these ideas, adding bullet points, new creative approaches, etc. Next, after another several minutes, all the participants pass the pieces of paper again until the papers have gone all the way around the group. Once the ideas have made it completely around the circle, the participants deliberate and choose which ones are best suited for further discussion.

By ensuring that everyone has a chance to contribute and by removing the common bias favoring the first idea presented, this strategy helps alleviate two of brainstorming’s most significant drawbacks — lop-sided conversations and the anchoring effect, whereby people rely too much on the first piece of information presented to draw subsequent conclusions during the decision making process.

Brainwriting can be even more effectively performed on the vast open surface of a whiteboard wall. Instead of using small pieces of paper to write down ideas related to the session’s topic, participants can write their thoughts on separate sections of the whiteboard wall in large lettering for all to see. Then after a set number of minutes, each team member can move to a different part of the wall and build on the ideas written by the previous writer, adding as much creative input as they want. Next, after another few minutes, the participants move again until they’ve given their input on all the sections of the wall written on by the group. Finally, now that the initial three ideas and subsequent contributions of all the participants have been posted on the wall, the group can review one another’s thoughts and choose those that are the most interesting and worthy of further discussion.

In such an exercise, compared to the cramped writing spaces of notepaper, the vast area of a whiteboard wall promotes more intensive levels of creative thought. Individuals tend to feel freer to express their novel ideas when confronted by the large open-ended surface of a whiteboard wall. Also, using a smooth-flowing dry erase marker as opposed to a small pen also tends to stimulate people to freely bring forth whatever is on their minds. These qualities can be of great benefit in practicing brainwriting because having much more space to write on in much larger letters tends to trigger ideas that might not arise when a person is confined to using 8 ½” by 11” notepaper as a writing surface.

Make Use of Free Association aka Rapid Ideation

In rapid ideation, meeting participants write down all the ideas that come to mind in a designated amount of time before anything is discussed, analyzed, or expanded upon. When practicing this brainstorming technique, you’ll have to establish a time limit, or else you’ll risk losing the feeling of urgency among your team members.

This brainstorming technique can be helpful in avoiding the common problem of having an idea shelved before it has a chance to grow and develop. By letting all meeting attendees bring forth their thoughts before any critiquing begins, rapid ideation eliminates the premature quashing of potentially great ideas and lets them flow out without constraints. The time limit can also help to prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they even begin sharing it with others—a frequent brainstorming mistake.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall as a Medium for Visual Aids

Including finely crafted visual components in your meeting presentations can enhance communications with team members, making them feel more engaged and interested in the content you present. Employing well-produced slides and other high-quality visual media such as films and diagrams can help participants to better comprehend and feel involved with your material, and a whiteboard wall is an ideal surface on which to perform such visual work. Designing and conducting graphic presentations are becoming increasingly essential tasks for doing business in today’s high-tech world of telecommuting and virtual communications.

Record All Significant Ideas and Input for Current and Future Reference

When you do a virtual meeting presentation, you should make a habit of writing down all the significant ideas and data put forward by the attendees on your whiteboard coated wall for all your team members to view and provide feedback on as the meeting progresses. Then you can erase and add more textual content and visuals whenever fresh ideas and information come up. The large dimensions and easy visibility of the content on your whiteboard wall will enhance the quality of your presentations, your communications with team members, and your team’s note-taking during virtual meetings, thus helping you to develop your individual brand and professional persona and boost your company’s productivity and profits. Then, after your virtual meetings are finished, you can take pictures of the results that you and the team members produced on the whiteboard wall and send them to the participants and other relevant parties for future reference and input.

Dry Erase Paint

HOSTING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING WITH A WHITEBOARD WALL

Hosting an Effective Meeting with a Whiteboard Wall
Holding a successful business meeting is a bit like landing a space module on the planet Mars. Keeping track of the seemingly infinite variables involved in the process appears hopeless, and conducting the perfect team gathering never seems to work out quite as you had planned. But unproductive company meetings aren’t as inevitable as they may seem. With the right communication tools and a touch of inspiration, you can conduct the meeting of your dreams every time you and your team members get together. One such communication tool is the premium whiteboard wall, which offers a highly durable and virtually endless space for presenting facts, expressing opinions, and coming up with creative ideas for product launches, marketing schemes, and the like.

Make meetings a team activity

To have your meetings become more than personal lectures by you, the organizer, it’s a good idea to take regular advantage of the distinctive viewpoints, experiences, and skillsets of your team members at all of your business get-togethers. Doing so can provide you with great opportunities to make your meetings more efficient, collaborative, and worthwhile, thus enhancing your company’s creativity, productivity, and bottom line.

Organize a Discussion

With the appropriate organization and guidance, collective dialog can bring about a more engaging meeting and generate more new and unique solutions to problems than a traditional lecture, even when a question-and-answer session is included. Devoting a specific segment of your meeting schedule to a brainstorming session is an excellent way to stimulate such group dialog. As the meeting coordinator, your job is to outline the goals of the session and to work in conjunction with your team to expand on ideas they come up with during the brainstorming process. With small groups, it’s easy to encourage free conversation among all the members present, but with large groups, it’s difficult. Thus, it’s more effective to separate the participants in a large meeting into smaller clusters then reunite them after a specific time period to discuss everyone’s ideas in the large group context.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall to Practice “Brainwriting”

Brainstorming is a key part of meetings where top-quality whiteboard-coated walls come into play. For both small and large gatherings, the quality of group discussions can be optimized by using the vast canvas of a whiteboard wall. In smaller meetings, a massive whiteboard wall provides ample room for everyone in attendance to brainstorm together through the use of mind maps, free association, and a host of other methods. In large meetings, however, it’s best to make use of the ample writing area of a whiteboard wall by first dividing the participants into small groups then asking them to use different segments of the wall to record their individual brainstorming ideas.

One novel brainstorming approach that’s popular today is known as “brainwriting.” In this partially nonverbal method, the participants use pieces of paper to write down three original ideas related to the session’s topic. Then after a designated number of minutes, the team members pass their ideas to the individuals on their right, who build from these ideas, adding bullet points, new creative approaches, etc. Next, after another several minutes, all the participants pass the pieces of paper again until the papers have gone all the way around the group. Once the ideas have made it completely around the circle, the participants deliberate and choose which ones are best suited for further discussion.

By ensuring that everyone has a chance to contribute and by removing the common bias favoring the first idea presented, this strategy helps alleviate two of brainstorming’s most significant drawbacks — lop-sided conversations and the anchoring effect, whereby people rely too much on the first piece of information presented to draw subsequent conclusions during the decision making process.

Brainwriting can be even more effectively performed on the vast open surface of a whiteboard wall. Instead of using small pieces of paper to write down ideas related to the session’s topic, participants can write their thoughts on separate sections of the whiteboard wall in large lettering for all to see. Then after a set number of minutes, each team member can move to a different part of the wall and build on the ideas written by the previous writer, adding as much creative input as they want. Next, after another few minutes, the participants move again until they’ve given their input on all the sections of the wall written on by the group. Finally, now that the initial three ideas and subsequent contributions of all the participants have been posted on the wall, the group can review one another’s thoughts and choose those that are the most interesting and worthy of further discussion.

In such an exercise, compared to the cramped writing spaces of notepaper, the vast area of a whiteboard wall promotes more intensive levels of creative thought. Individuals tend to feel freer to express their novel ideas when confronted by the large open-ended surface of a whiteboard wall. Also, using a smooth-flowing dry erase marker as opposed to a small pen also tends to stimulate people to freely bring forth whatever is on their minds. These qualities can be of great benefit in practicing brainwriting because having much more space to write on in much larger letters tends to trigger ideas that might not arise when a person is confined to using 8 ½” by 11” notepaper as a writing surface.

Make Use of Free Association aka Rapid Ideation

In rapid ideation, meeting participants write down all the ideas that come to mind in a designated amount of time before anything is discussed, analyzed, or expanded upon. When practicing this brainstorming technique, you’ll have to establish a time limit, or else you’ll risk losing the feeling of urgency among your team members.

This brainstorming technique can be helpful in avoiding the common problem of having an idea shelved before it has a chance to grow and develop. By letting all meeting attendees bring forth their thoughts before any critiquing begins, rapid ideation eliminates the premature quashing of potentially great ideas and lets them flow out without constraints. The time limit can also help to prevent people from talking themselves out of an idea before they even begin sharing it with others—a frequent brainstorming mistake.

Use Your Whiteboard Wall as a Medium for Visual Aids

Including finely crafted visual components in your meeting presentations can enhance communications with team members, making them feel more engaged and interested in the content you present. Employing well-produced slides and other high-quality visual media such as films and diagrams can help participants to better comprehend and feel involved with your material, and a whiteboard wall is an ideal surface on which to perform such visual work. Designing and conducting graphic presentations are becoming increasingly essential tasks for doing business in today’s high-tech world of telecommuting and virtual communications.

Record All Significant Ideas and Input for Current and Future Reference

When you do a virtual meeting presentation, you should make a habit of writing down all the significant ideas and data put forward by the attendees on your whiteboard coated wall for all your team members to view and provide feedback on as the meeting progresses. Then you can erase and add more textual content and visuals whenever fresh ideas and information come up. The large dimensions and easy visibility of the content on your whiteboard wall will enhance the quality of your presentations, your communications with team members, and your team’s note-taking during virtual meetings, thus helping you to develop your individual brand and professional persona and boost your company’s productivity and profits. Then, after your virtual meetings are finished, you can take pictures of the results that you and the team members produced on the whiteboard wall and send them to the participants and other relevant parties for future reference and input.

Dry Erase Paint