Mini whiteboards vs a digital check: when to use each

Show-me boards, mini whiteboards, whatever the department calls them: a pen, a wipe, every pupil holds up an answer. No account, no trolley that was booked by science, no password written on a planner and lost. For a lot of checks they are the right tool. They are not the honest tool for every question.

This is the comparison. A wider menu of checks is in checking for understanding. How talk-based routines fail to show you the class is in cold calling and no-hands-up. If you have been using scannable cards instead of boards, that comparison is in Plickers alternatives. More notes are on the blog.

What mini whiteboards are genuinely good at

A step of working. A graph sketched badly and still readable. A labelled arrow. A French sentence short enough to fit. A vote, when you do not need to store the vote. Anything where the thinking is visual and the cost of a wrong answer, held up for three seconds, is low.

They are also the right tool in a room with a real phone ban and no spare devices. A check that needs a phone will not happen, and a check that does not happen tells you nothing. "Boards out" is quicker than a login, and on a Friday that speed is the difference between doing the check and skipping it.

Where they start lying to you

The board is public. The pupil who is unsure waits. The pupil in front writes. The unsure pupil writes the same thing, a bit messier, so it looks like their own. You see thirty boards and a pleasing amount of the right answer. You have seen one row, copied backwards.

You also cannot read thirty boards. You read the middle, because that is where your eyes land, and you miss the back corner, which is where the pupil who does not want to be read has already learnt to sit. A board tilted towards a friend and away from you is a skill. Some classes are very skilled.

There is no record. The moment you say "rub them off", the evidence is gone. If you needed it for tomorrow's grouping, you will be relying on a memory of a glance. Memories of glances are kind to us. They edit out the boards we did not want to see.

One-word answers are the worst fit. "Mitochondria." "Outside bend." "de." They can be copied in the time it takes you to say "show me." A diagram of working is harder to copy in a second, which is why maths often gets more truth from a board than a vocabulary quiz does.

How to run a show-me that is harder to game

• Boards stay down until you count. Not "hover them when you're ready". Ready means they have looked.
• A short, real wait. If the question is a single word, three seconds is enough for the copiers and not enough for the thinkers. Ask for the word and a reason, or ask for the second line of working.
• Look at the back row first. Say nothing about the front until you have seen the pupils who think they are out of range.
• Ask why of someone whose board does not match their neighbour. If every why is "because he had that", you have learnt something important, and it is not the content.
• Do not rub them all off immediately if you saw a split. Leave them up long enough to say "lots of us have the first line, and the second line has split into two methods." Then rub.

None of this makes the board private. It only makes copying slightly harder and your glance slightly more honest. If the question is "can you say the reason in a sentence you would not want read aloud", a board is the wrong medium. Use something else without apology.

What a digital check is good at

A digital check, done properly, gives you a name and an answer the neighbour cannot see. You can look at the pupil you worry about without standing over their book. You can still have the answer after the bell, which is the thing a board will never do. You can ask for a sentence, which is a better test than a letter, because a letter is guessable and a sentence has to come from them.

It is worse at diagrams. Typing a column of algebra on a phone is slow and messy. A graph sketched with a finger is worse than a pen on a board. If the understanding lives in the working, do not force the working into a text box and then conclude they cannot do it. You may have tested their typing.

It depends on a device and a connection. A trolley that will not charge, a wifi drop at the far end of the building, a class set booked by someone else: the check dies, and if you had no paper backup you have lost the hinge of the lesson. Boards do not have this failure. Know which failure you prefer for this class.

It also depends on the task not turning into a race or a game. The moment speed wins points, you are measuring who tapped fastest, not who understood. A quiz can be a good starter for energy. It is a bad way to find the pupil who is carefully wrong.

A decision you can make at the planning stage

• Use boards for a method, a sketch, a label, a quick vote, and any room where devices are fantasy.
• Use a private digital answer when the reason matters, when copying is likely, when you need the names tomorrow, and when the devices work.
• Use talk after one of those, not instead of them. One pupil explaining a board is teaching. It is not a second check.
• Use both when you can: the working on the board, held up together, and one sentence typed or written on paper that only you see. The board shows the method. The sentence shows whether the method is theirs.

Plickers-style cards are a third option: public-ish multiple choice, no pupil device. They belong in the alternatives piece, not here. They do not replace a board when you needed to see working, and they do not replace a sentence when you needed a reason.

If you want the private version without a pile of slips

A named slip of paper still works, and it fails for the old reason: you will not read thirty at the bell. Get It? is the digital end of this comparison. You type the topic, it drafts the questions, you edit or delete them, and pupils answer in their own words on any device with a class code. No account. Not A to D, so there is nothing to guess. In about two minutes you see who has got it, who is unsure, and who needs help. It is free for a limited time, no card.

If the school policy is that phones stay in bags, do not ask them to get the phones out. Use the laptops or tablets if they exist, or use the boards and run them properly. A tool that fights the room will be used once. The board on the desk will still be there on Monday.

Questions people ask

Try it on one class.

One lesson. One question. Two minutes. If it doesn't tell you something you didn't already know, walk away.

Try it free — no card

Students need no account. They just need the code.