A whiteboard calendar is a staple in offices, classrooms, lecture halls, and staff and maintenance rooms. These are large whiteboards with grids or slots where people can jot down an important reminder, event or chore for a specific day or month.
Types, Designs, Materials
There are many designs made for whiteboard calendars, but the most basic and the most common is a one-month calendar format. It has a 7×5 grid with labels for each day of the week and a blank on top where you can indicate the month. You will also have to fill in the numbers or days of the month yourself.
A whiteboard calendar is so useful in learning institutions and corporate environments that it is ubiquitous in such places.
Pros
The primary purpose of a whiteboard calendar is to organize a schedule stretching over at least a month. The size and visibility of this calendar also helps remind people of upcoming important events.
The ease in writing and erasing is a great advantage. It is easy to jot down additional instructions and reminders, or erase an entry if there are last minute changes to the schedule.
The grids, months, and day numbers on a whiteboard calendar are permanent. You don’t have to worry about the grids and labels getting erased accidentally. You don’t have waste your time creating the calendar grids all over again.
A whiteboard calendar is practically a blank slate that is very easy to personalize. Even if it is plain and devoid of any design or color, you can accessorize and decorate it using permanent-ink color pens. Some whiteboard calendars are even attached to a corkboard, so there can be additional room for pinning notes, colorful cards, and other decorations.
The large variety of whiteboard calendars to choose from is also an advantage. There’s a monthly format and a cork-and-whiteboard calendar as mentioned above. There are also complete, full-year calendars with a column for each month of the year, and rows with slots enough for 31 days. Office personnel can mount these on common rooms and/or staff rooms and jot down office-wide events and reminders on them.
Lastly, a whiteboard calendar looks more presentable. There’s no chalk dust to clean up after, and a whiteboard pen can be refilled when the ink runs out.
Cons
A whiteboard calendar is much more expensive than those same-sized calendar sheets, or even a blackboard.
Funny enough, the other disadvantages of a whiteboard calendar stem from the factors that make them appealing in the first place.
It is indeed easy to write and erase an entry on the board — and sometimes it is just too easy. The writings are very vulnerable and can be easily lost if someone happens to stand too close with his sleeve brushing on the whiteboard.
Refilling the ink on the whiteboard pen can be messy and is often bothersome. It prompts people to purchase a new whiteboard pen, which is an added expense on top of the board’s already expensive price tag.
As for the whiteboard calendar being more presentable and clean, that can be easily messed up by anyone with a mischievous inclination and a whiteboard pen on hand.