Dry-Erase board for study

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Do you use DRY-ERASE board while studying?

Should I invest in it or buy Wacom pen tablet and connect it to laptop while studying?
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Just an undergrad but using a dry erase board helps me alot. I can usually just write it once or twice and have it memorized. Just buy alot of markers cause you will go through them fairly quickly
 
I'll give my opinion as a med student.

I used my own whiteboard in college for studying until it broke.

In med school, I'd sometimes study in classrooms with their own whiteboards, then I might use them. Sometimes I'd specifically want a whiteboard while studying, so I'd go to one of the classrooms, study rooms with a whiteboard or white board walls (depending on how much I wanted to write). I didn't need to have my own in med school -- just my own markers because the school only left out a couple of colors at any given time.

Use whatever study method works best for you, if you know you like to study at home with a white board, buy one, if you study at school and don't want to carry around a white board, don't buy one. It's that simple. You may even find a more effective way to learn while in med school.
 
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I just bought a whiteboard because I rembember the thousands of sheets of paper I went through drawing out biochem reactions. I think I can save a few trees just by using a whiteboard for med school biochem.
 
A white board is a lot cheaper than a Wacom tablet, but you can do more with it. Plus you have the option of saving whatever you draw/write, or turning it into (searchable) text in one step. With a white-board you eventually need to erase it. Microsoft OneNote is fantastic for using a tablet- you can write and type anywhere, categorize things into master sections, then tabs and sub-tabs, you can scan things right into the program very easily, it does handwriting and even speech recognition, and it's just very flexible. Even if you don't get a tablet give OneNote a try for every day stick-it note type stuff. I've even started keeping my recipes there.

Circuit City has the Bamboo $10 cheaper than MSRP, and every now and then they offer 10% off a whole category of products that includes tablets. I ordered it on like a Wednesday afternoon for 24 minute in-store pickup, and it wasn't ready when I got there (they had to go get it, then brought the wrong one). Anyway, as with their guarantee I got a $24 gift card. I returned it at first because I wasn't working at the time and decided I didn't REALLY need it, but changed my mind a few weeks later when it went 10% off again and used the gift card. Anyway, in the end I got it for like $44 >). I think the 10% off thing applies only to online orders, as it appears as a "coupon code" on the product page.
 
I've officially never used a whiteboard in medical school and would probably have very minimal need for it. It's cheap, though, so eh, try it out.
 
i have a white board but was too cheap to buy a big one and i get flecks of marker dust everywhere.

i was happier with the white board contact paper roll i bought for the MCAT studying...and i had it all over the apt (yes, even in the bathroom for extra study time...)
 
Instead of a white board, use a mirror. Get the dry erase markers that u would usually use on a white board and draw on your bathroom mirror, or bedroom mirror..Same thing.
 
I used to use white boards in ugrad but thought they were less efficient in grad school. I also think that it is faster to write on paper and easier. sometimes those big bulky boards are more a pain then a help or having to stand all the time and bend sometimes to write on the bottom of the board is a pain compared to sitting and writing on paper. You can always recycle paper, so it makes up for over use of paper.
 
i used a whiteboard all the time as an undergrad for all the science and math classes, once i got to med school i used it much less. still might help you though for listing all the drugs in a certain class for pharmacology or drawing stuff over and over again when studying for anatomy. you can get a decent sized board for a good price, like someone else mentioned too you could always just draw on mirrors or windows with a dry erase marker. any visitors might think you are a little crazy, but it works. :laugh:
 
I've got one 2x3 or so, so you can take it down and write flat too. Plus when I made my desk I used a white slick surface to top it, so that gives me another 16 sq. ft. of learning area.

I don't know how people pass medical school without dry-erase boards!
 
Whiteboards rock. Don't bother with the tablet.

If you want to save what's on the whiteboard, take a picture with your digital camera. Great way to compile notes IMO.
 
digitlnoize said:
Whiteboards rock. Don't bother with the tablet.

If you want to save what's on the whiteboard, take a picture with your digital camera. Great way to compile notes IMO.
Click to expand...

I do that too, but I do wish it was searchable sometimes. But really, I can reproduce most of my doodles even I see a low-res thumbnail, so they aren't hard to bring back to working memory. I know what is in them if I see the 10K ft. view.

I do it because I have a smaller board or if something strikes me while I'm at a community whiteboard.
 
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Mr. Freeze said:
I do that too, but I do wish it was searchable sometimes. But really, I can reproduce most of my doodles even I see a low-res thumbnail, so they aren't hard to bring back to working memory. I know what is in them if I see the 10K ft. view.

I do it because I have a smaller board or if something strikes me while I'm at a community whiteboard.
Click to expand...

I took pictures after my friend and I filled up whiteboard walls in a room ~15'x4' with about 8-10 panels with neuro pathways. We were just so impressed that we accomplished that, that I came back with my camera after the test; they were still there, and I took pics. I later used them to review pathways on the final and briefly on step 1.
 
Mr. Freeze said:
I do that too, but I do wish it was searchable sometimes. But really, I can reproduce most of my doodles even I see a low-res thumbnail, so they aren't hard to bring back to working memory. I know what is in them if I see the 10K ft. view.

I do it because I have a smaller board or if something strikes me while I'm at a community whiteboard.
Click to expand...

You can make it searchable. Just use F2 and change the filenames to whatever the drawing is about. I'm also really anal about grouping things into the correct folders and such. I tend to follow the chapters in the book, so all my drawings from biochem chapter 12 would be in a Biochem folder, then in their own folder called chapter 12 - Topic X.

This makes things much easier to find.

"A place for everything, and everything in it's place."
 
It depends on the class. Dry erase board can be useful but only for a certain type of classes. I would say it is more useful in undergrad than medical school.
 
gujuDoc said:
I used to use white boards in ugrad but thought they were less efficient in grad school. I also think that it is faster to write on paper and easier. sometimes those big bulky boards are more a pain then a help or having to stand all the time and bend sometimes to write on the bottom of the board is a pain compared to sitting and writing on paper. You can always recycle paper, so it makes up for over use of paper.
Click to expand...

I prefer paper since I like to correct it in a different color and then stare at my mistakes. I do it again on another sheet of paper and compare to previous attempts to see improvement. It really helps me to learn pathways if I can see what I've consistently forgotten.

To save paper, use the backside of random sheets of paper you have around. I find that with med school I have so many pieces of paper with nothing useful on the one side and then a blank side on the back so I use that. Then I recycle. It's my way to get the most use out of each sheet of paper.
 
kypdurron5 said:
A white board is a lot cheaper than a Wacom tablet, but you can do more with it. Plus you have the option of saving whatever you draw/write, or turning it into (searchable) text in one step. With a white-board you eventually need to erase it. Microsoft OneNote is fantastic for using a tablet- you can write and type anywhere, categorize things into master sections, then tabs and sub-tabs, you can scan things right into the program very easily, it does handwriting and even speech recognition, and it's just very flexible. Even if you don't get a tablet give OneNote a try for every day stick-it note type stuff. I've even started keeping my recipes there.

Circuit City has the Bamboo $10 cheaper than MSRP, and every now and then they offer 10% off a whole category of products that includes tablets. I ordered it on like a Wednesday afternoon for 24 minute in-store pickup, and it wasn't ready when I got there (they had to go get it, then brought the wrong one). Anyway, as with their guarantee I got a $24 gift card. I returned it at first because I wasn't working at the time and decided I didn't REALLY need it, but changed my mind a few weeks later when it went 10% off again and used the gift card. Anyway, in the end I got it for like $44 >). I think the 10% off thing applies only to online orders, as it appears as a "coupon code" on the product page.
Click to expand...

Let me know how it works
 
Mirror and digital camera sounds good as I have digital camera
 
loved whiteboards for anatomy, immunology, and biochem. i used the whiteboards at school, as my handwriting is large.

didn't find them helpful for terminology based classes (histo, micro, path)
 
Dry-erase boards: not fun for lefties. 🙁
 
edit
 
I love having a whiteboard around. I think it's always useful to have one around to make a big-picture diagrams and stuff.

Also, don't buy those expensive brand name whiteboard from staples. Get a white shower tile from home depot ($15 for a huge board), and have them cut it to size. Then cover your apartment wall with the stuff.
 
Notice to dry-erase board users; please erase stuff off boards when you're done with doodling and don't need the material anymore. Some of the material may impress strangers and undergrads, but not me.
 
cobaltgreen said:
i have a white board but was too cheap to buy a big one and i get flecks of marker dust everywhere.
Click to expand...

Same thing happened to me. I used one for OChem and thought it was great. It was just too much hassle though. It made a mess over time and all the erasers sucked. I ended up just buying note books for scrap paper.
 
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