Great Language Learning Tool Kent Boogie Board

Writing and Language Learning

I’m a big fan of noting things down. I write, I draw and I do it all the time. I do it on paper most of the time.

I’m a big believer that in language learning writing with your hand is one of the great techniques to remember things. That’s why I was really happy to have discovered a board that allows me to write as many language drills as I want and without wasting any paper ! 

Boogie Board Language Drill
Boogie Board Language Drill

How do I learn languages

I buy notebooks or I use old scraps of paper that I find at home or at school. I have also been trying to find a tool that I could use as a replacement for paper.

I love writing on paper but it has several disadvantages. It is not ecological and the papers can become cumbersome after some time. And it is not very ecological.

I have always been looking for some kind of tool that would allow me to endlessly write drills for language learning but which would be a Word Document or a Spreadsheet (even though both are also great solutions and I also have a special way of using both to improve learning).

I have tried many. A whiteboard that you can erase, a small white board (the size of an iPad) that you can erase too, my smartphone, and a Wacom Bamboo pad. The problem was that I have never used any of them for long (except for notebooks).

There are several reasons for this.

 First of all, you need markers. And markers are expensive.

As teacher I can have many makers as I wish, that’s just one of the advantages of being a teacher, but there is another problem. Markers stain and eventually blot out the white board. At least the ones that I used to have.

The other problem is that is doesn’t feel like paper. It allows you writing freely with your hand but it is not as “detailed” as it would be on paper. It is not ecological either.

As for the smartphone screen and Wacom Bamboo Board, they are still far from giving you the feeling as if writing on paper with a real pen.

A great alternative to paper

Recently I have been offered the Kent Boogie Board and it is really amazing. It really feels like writing on paper. You may do endless drills, sentence repetitions or drawings. And it really feels great and is easy.

It really works like the small whiteboard I told you before (or rather a small chalkboard because of its dark aspect …), and primarily it should be used and one, that is a tool to easily and cleanly write things many many time, without the need of storing them.

The device gives you the possibility of taking a photo (with the “jot” app available for free in appstore) of what you write and save it as a black on white pdf file. The quality of the image is really great but the fact that you need to save it each time you want to keep what you have written makes it rather cumbersome.

I wouldn’t use it for long note taking as you would be quite awkward to take the photo with your smartphone over and over again. But if there is a thing you want to cram down into your head, the Boogie Board is a great solution.

Besides, I’m convinced that the same board of a bigger size would be a much better solution for teachers at school than the whiteboard to note the things for students, or even the interactive whiteboard which is just a mess…

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