Slashdot Log In
Chalkboards With Brains
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jun 11, 2005 06:49 AM
from the i-hate-chalk dept.
from the i-hate-chalk dept.
theodp writes "Third graders at Columbia University's elementary school may never know the sound of fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. All across the country, dust-covered chalkboards are being ditched in favor of interactive whiteboards that allow students and teachers to share assignments, surf the web and edit video using their fingers as pens." From the article: "Bang uses the board to display a wide range of learning materials on her computer, from web pages to video clips. It is also used as a lunch-time reward for students: The children watched Black Beauty on the same screen that was used earlier for geography."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Potential for abuse (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Potential for abuse (Score:5, Funny)
A 10x10ft Goatse on the far wall 30 seconds into the first presentation of monday morning was a sight to behold, as were the reactions of my classmates. Maybe it was my maniacal laughter while the rest of the class was trying not to vomit that gave me away and got me frogmarched down to the principal's office, I don't know...
Still, I got a week's holid... suspension out of it, so it wasn't too bad.
Parent
Real value (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, editing what you've written, brings a whole new aspect to writing on a board. Being able to "drag" a chunk of what you've written to make room for something you forgot or didn't have room for, is a life saver. Similarly, if you run low on room, you can scale everything you've written down a bit, and continue on without having to break up your work. Very powerful.
Similarly, being able to flip back and forth between "pages" of stuff that wouldn't fit on one board, or after you've moved on, and want to refer back, is very convenient.
Getting hard copies of everything on the board, another major value.
The previous generation with which I'm familiar, took a bit of practice to use, so some folks in our company didn't take to it; but I'm sure the technology (esp the software) has evolved, and kids pick things up more quickly than adults, anyway.
Re:Real value (Score:5, Interesting)
One was very excited about all of the presentational gadgetry at her community college. Luckily she had some very good professors, but sometimes the gadgetry failed at inopportune times. Othertimes the gadegtry took over the presentation (think of slide shows / powerpoint presentations where you stop listening to the orator because the slides compete).
A month ago, she started taking classes at my alma mater. She was very happy to find that the professors didn't seem to be harder than those of her community college, but a bit worried that there was almost no special presentational hardware. For those who wonder, the material was primarialy displayed on an array of sliding chalkboards. Interestingly enough, her grasp of the material improved.
Now there's at least a million reasons why her understanding of the material may have nothing to do with the presentational medium; however, those who took (or were forced to take) a speech class can understand immediately why low tech often makes the best presentation: You don't compete against your material for the audience's attention.
With a chalkboard, there's not enough time to lay out every detail, so the presentation focuses on big ideas, drilling down into details where necessary, tied together with occasional diagrams. This puts the burdeon of explaining the material on the orator, who is likely well versed in the material. Basically you are getting the information from the expert.
With presentation mediums of higher fidelity, the medium presents so many details that the orator (if one is even present) a distraction. The downside is that you have to personally discover the pitfalls of what's not spelled out in the medium, and you fail to get feedback on ideas that you might believe plausible, but are poorly founded due to conditions outside of the scope of the studied material.
At one end of the spectrum you have professors, at the other you have books. I wouldn't want to read a text while someone was talking to me, nor would I want to listen to a professor while I am busy watching a movie / reading a book. High content presentational medium has its place, but without personal feedback, correction mental misperceptions cannot be made as they form which can be equally destructive to understanding. Oddly enough, the same high content presentation competes with the person most likely to be trying to teach us something.
Parent
Re:Real value (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Real value (Score:3, Informative)
Our school got a grant of £30,000 to be spent on interactive whiteboards, at £3,000 each. Only 3 teachers ever use them, one uses it simply as a projector, one switches back to using it as a normal whiteboard frequently as it's easier and the other has lots of problems. He erases something, it pops back up when he starts writing again, undo then undoes the last minute of text and then
Detention (Score:5, Funny)
shudder (Score:2, Funny)
Ewwww!
Don't do that! You might as well have included hello.jpg in the story!
Now, think of your breathing.
now they've blown it... (Score:2, Insightful)
nothing like an unauthorised public performance to get the MPAA on your ass... perhaps they should have checked the little license that is shown when playing the dvd... the one which defines what constitutes home use...
Grandparent post probably correct (Score:2)
But if the teacher just put the movie in to give the kids a break on a hot summers day and allow him/her to grade some papers without being bothered...I am pretty sure that would fall outside of fair use in the USA.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html [copyright.gov]
Interesting (Score:2)
Its a sad day (Score:2)
Of course on the brighter side you do open up the opprortunity to hack the whiteboard and insert funny images onto the screen on the most opportune time. And then there's accidently surfing to whitehouse.com by the teacher.
Re:Its a sad day (Score:2)
No reward here (Score:2)
And that is supposed to be reward ? Poor Kids.
Now, I hate them (Score:2)
I know is kind of wanky, but nothing can replace the coolness of real blackboards. I really hate that mu department has just these new white boards and that my offic
Re:Now, I hate them (Score:2)
This might work for a small classroom. The pictures indicate however that these boards are too small to be useful in a larger class. I doubt one can read the small written text. The boards can not be made much larger because kids have write on them. This limits the distance to the screen.
I think there are cheaper alternatives: the projector attached to a computer can be u
Re:Now, I hate them (Score:2)
Whiteboards are much better. And, chalk in the eraser is even worse - could really screw it up
Chalkboards are about procedure,not content (Score:2)
Not new :) (Score:2, Insightful)
Interactive Whiteboards (Score:2)
A system which does work and has *gasp* -- found a use for tablet PCs -- is where the teacher has the TabletPC and wa
it's so dark... (Score:2)
As someone who suffers fom poor eyesight, I hate to see people abuse their vision like this.
Re:it's so dark... (Score:2)
I also wondered who the hell decided that the kids should be sitting in a dark room all day long. Money speaks I suppose. Who cares whether it hurts their eyesight and probably even their health (sunlight is good, remember?).
Re:it's so dark... (Score:2)
All the more incentive for me to join the idle rich!
old (Score:2, Interesting)
Purpose? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod me a troll or whatever - maybe I'm just bitter and cynical because schools flipped out over computers and the promise that because kids were now doing math facts on Asteroids they'd be doing university-level numerical analysis before they got their drivers license. For what? Nothing. Schools invested millions and now are trapped in contracts with Microsoft for millions so kids don't have to pick up a pen and pull out a sheet of paper.
Kids don't learn better when you put something on a screen that someone sold the school with inflated promises in order to make their monthly sales commission. They (we!) learn better when we have good teachers with adequate supplies of basic essentials like books and teaching materials and we have an open mind.
America (the rest of the world too?) has got to stop this culture of worshipping the kids and bending to their will because something is "hard" or "boring". Kids whine about something and the country spends millions to accommodate them. Math is hard? Good, tough up kid because the rest of the world is tough and isn't going to bend to your will. Stop buying thousand dollar machines to add flashy videos of cartoon characters doing the bumb and grind to the multiplication table.
I whined about math being hard and used the crutch of calculators until I did A.P. Calculus AB/BC without a calculator. The best thing that ever happened to me. Then I realized the importance of getting to the details and nitty little things of a subject like math. When you can push yourself through difficult things, you build your ability to do tough things in the future. It sounds strange, but because I labored through calculus without a calculator, I'm a better computer science major. See? Character building!
Recalling the best classes/teachers I've ever had in my 15 years of public school and college now, the one's I've walked away with the most from have been the ones where we stuck to the basics: calculus without calculators, marching band without PDAs strapped to our heads, literature without ebooks, science without lame and detached "learning" computer programs, etc etc etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology. I'm a computer science major and I still have lofty ambitions of improving the world through computer science. But a computer is a tool to learn information. It shouldn't be the information.
A $2,000 blender does not a better chef make. A $2,000 computer does not a better educated kid make.
(This was a rant that spiraled out of control quickly. I blame the caffeine...)
Re:Purpose? (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a town with 4 elementary schools. The fourth was just built about 3-4 years ago. The other three are from the 50's-early 70s. Parents who don't deal with teachers on a regular basis are flocking into the new district. The "new" school already has trailer out back because its overcrowde
Re:Purpose? (Score:3, Insightful)
You should be suspicious of this rationale, since it is ridiculous if carried to the extreme. Books and chalkboards, after all, are only "technological crutches" for learning, as are heated and air-conditioned classrooms with artificial light.
The bottom line is that something like 80% of the expenses at a typical American high school or college are salaries. If you can spend $2000 on anything that makes a classroom teacher being paid $30000/year even slightly more productive, you've probably won. After a
Re:Purpose? (Score:3, Informative)
different funding sources with specific rules as to what each can be spent on... ie. you can't take funds for IT and use them to pay better wages to attract better teachers or to improve the building fabric... the money for those whiteboards ma
I take issue with this. (Score:2)
The students, on the other hand, rarely seem to get any value out of it unless the teacher doing the teaching is really goood, which brings us back to the core principle: Good teachers can convey knowledge with very few whi
Good for IT subject (Score:2)
it' not the tool... (Score:3, Insightful)
As others also said, kids [as we are talking about elementary schools here] can be very well taught without unnecesarry tech equipment. Why I say unnecessary ? Because if not used well [you know, tech for tech's sake] they can turn out to be more a distraction than a helping tool.
Also, making kids familiar with technology at an early age _can_ be good. But not when these are the _only_ tools they meet. I hope they can find the best balance somewhere in between.
Backup power supply (Score:3, Insightful)
Problems with Durability, obsolesce and TCO (Score:3, Interesting)
Durability: All it takes is one pissed off kid stabbing it with a pencil to kill it. What about scratches? Assuming (hopefully) there is a clear screen protector most schools will wait until one can barely see through it before replacing. The screen protector would most likely cost a few hundred dollars and would need to be replaced once a year. Also repairing a big screen monitor like this is difficult and would require two people to pull it off the wall, deliver it to wherever it will be repaired and reinstall. Atleast three hours per person.
Obsolesce: Every few years these things get better and cheaper. $20k today is $10 in three years with a better picture and more features. In five to eight years these monitors will either sit in a pile like PII computers today or hang on the wall dead.
TCO: Between the initial cost, screen protectors and a short lifespan compared to a standard whiteboard these things IMO are way too pricey for the average secondary school.
Why not go with a LCD/DLP projector and a Mitsubishi DiamondTouch input device? A DiamondTouch "tablet" handles multiple, simultaneous input (two people can write on it at the same time), is incredibly durable and requires much less maintenance than a backlit screen. One could last for 10+ years handling input while the projector is updated every few years. IMO the TCO would be much lower than a huge touchscreen. As for durability it can be easily washed and very cheaply recovered. Since the sensors are on the sides and not behind the writing area it's rather immune from the "pencil penetration" scenario. Also Mitsubishi has been really good about driver support for GNU/Linux (along with MS Windows and Mac of course).
Will a backlit screen is nicer, a top lit projector and the above tablet IMO is a more realistic solution.
DiamondTouch Hardware [merl.com]
DiamondTouch Applications [merl.com]
We had 30 of these! (Score:3, Informative)
The total setup runs around $15 grand, plus or minus depending on what you do with it. The projector is the most expensive part, at around $5-6000 for a really nice one. The board itself runs around $2000, for the basic model. To make it easier to start up, we had a touchpanel on the wall with various functions on it - turn on projector, show computer, show video, show laptop, blank screen, increase volume, etc. That really helped make the whole setup a lot easier to use for people.
Since we had them for so long, we had a pretty good understanding of what works and what doesn't.
The neatest thing about the SmartBoard is that you can kind of make it what you want. If you want it to just be a whiteboard, it can do that. If you want it to be a glorified powerpoint viewer, you can do that. If you want to really get into it, you can start to do all sorts of cool interactive applications with it. Smart Technology's software has improved markedly in the past few years, and the new version allows you to embed all sorts of multimedia objects, and best of all -- Flash! There is a TON of potential with the new capabilities.
Because it is so versatile, it integrates very easily and very smoothly into existing classrooms. Teachers typically find it very easy to use, provided you have done a good job with setup. Maintenance can get to be time consuming -- teachers rely on these things every single minute of the day, and they have to be working all the time. But there are like two-dozen points of failure. Then there's the projector -- the bulbs cost about $500 each, and last about 1400 hours. Maintaining the SmartBoard setups consumed probably about 20% of my time overall when I worked there.
Through my four years there (I just quit in May to go to grad school at CMU), we eventually ramped up to just over 30 of them. Every teacher wants one, and most teachers used them pretty well. Is it $15,000 well? Probably not, but the students really like them, and a dedicated teacher can REALLY do a lot with them.
I taught for two years, in both a SmartBoard classroom and a non SmartBoard classroom. I taught programming, and having the ability to show the programs on the board and edit code on the board was just fantastic. At one point, I did get moved to a classroom without a SmartBoard and with just a regular old chalkboard. Personally, I preferred using the chalkboard, but really just because: a) if you want to use the smartboard well, you should be prepared for class -- I was never prepared, b) I write a bit too fast and too sloppy for the SmartBoard to pick it up well, c) I like having a LOT of space on which to write, d) playing with chalk is fun. If I had more time to put into the class I was teaching, I would've really gotten a lot more out of the SmartBoard capability when I had it.
A lot of schools are faced with increasing pressure to bring computers and "technology" into the classroom. The primary thrust has been laptop programs. Personally, I think the laptop has very little place in a HS classroom. Our neighboring school did the laptop program, and they had some up and more down with it. The laptop creates a barrier inbetween the teacher and the student. In theory, it creates a more self-driven learning approach. But in High School, 99% of students are not self-driving their learning, they are playing games or on AIM most of the time. And the support costs for a laptop program are astronomical. In contrast, the SmartBoard is a teacher-driven approach that restores the focus back to the front of the classroom and the ma
Re:This is pretty old (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate people touching my screen, and hate to do it myself.
I can try to enforce using a stylus at all times, but having the screen touchy would make their fingers gravitate to it.
Re:Price? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the more general problem is: 10 year old use computers, and everybody is really really desperate to get them to get them to use high-tech wizardry, when really what all that does is make kids multimediocre.
Primary school don't need computers to teach kid to read, write and do basic math. They need good well-paid students and good quality schoolbooks...
Re:Price? (Score:2)
well, paying the students WOULD be a great motivation to come to class everyday, but try getting that one through the schoolboard...
Re:Price? (Score:3, Interesting)
Intrestingly in the UK they have started paying students. For 16-21 there is a thing called EMA which gives the students £30/week: provided they attend all their classes and behave themselves. It seems to be working as a motivational tool.
Re:Price? (Score:2)
Oops I meant teachers of course
Re:Price? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Price? (Score:2)
If I may interject a follow to your point; from the article:
I think that about says it all. We now send out kids to school to "learn" how to use Google (as if they haven't already figgered that out on their own) with
Projector Bulb costs too. (Score:2)
With bulb lives as low as 1400hrs, thats possibly not the greatest of economies.
Re:Price? -vs- value? (Score:2)
Of course, the students who got to use the gee whiz high tech equipement were most likely the students who would learn using any method for learning from reading a text to listen
Re:Price? (Score:2)
The four year old computers at my school BARELY have enough power for MS Publisher and one IE window for research... Specs are: Celery 1.1GHz Coppermine, 256MB PC133, 20GB DeskStar 60GXP (we've had two die already), WinXP Pro Corporate SP1 (illegal install, but a site license was then slapped on top of it), Office XP
The five year old computers can't really do that without thrashing swap (although, those are LOADED with spyware...) Specs: P3 866MHz, 128MB PC133, 20GB Seagate HDD, XP Pro, Office XP (s
Re:Price? (Score:2)
Re:Abuse of school property... (Score:2)
I for one sure hope they're showing kids the right Black Beauty, and not other kinds [blogspot.com].
Re:Poo-shaw (Score:2)
I'm not bad at reading bad handwriting - after all, I can read my own
If I'm typing notes off of a PowerPoint, and the instructor doesn't follow the ppt, it can be ugly trying to keep up (especially when caffeine-based OCing screws up your aim for keys - I can do about 70wpm not on caffeine, probably 80 uncorrected wpm with it, but 50 corrected...) Handwriting, on the other hand, maxes out at 10-20wpm. If the instructor is writing, I can buzz along at 70wpm, and end up waiting on him/her
Re:Windows indoctrination (Score:2)
Re:Windows indoctrination (Score:2)
Re:Cost (Score:2)