I think schools lose a little bit of charm...

[SirKazum]

...when blackboard and chalk are replaced with whiteboard and dry-erase markers.

I don't know... it's the hiss of chalk, instead of the squeak of markers. The rough and grainy texture of the lines. The slight, ghostly remains of past scribblings that stay after you erase. Teachers always picking a student to erase for them (probably because of the chalk dust). Hell, even the chalk dust that gets everywhere. Banging erasers (on the board, on the support, banging two erasers together) to get the excess dust out. Blowing chalk dust out of the support and all over the floor

Of course, I'm aware that all of that is nothing but pure nostalgia, that it probably sounds insane to people raised in the whiteboard era, and that markers are much more practical, leave much less of a mess, and are probably better for the teacher's health (all that chalk dust in their lungs can't be good). But it just feels like it's missing something... you know? It's too clean. Too sterile. Blackboard and chalk feel more real to me.

What do you think about that? And any other cranky-old-person attachments to things that don't make much practical sense today but just feel better, that you want to share? (Needless to say, mind the forum policies and keep this non-political.)

[An Enemy Spy]

The only class I was in that had a chalkboard was Kindergarten, so I have no nostalgia for it. I will say however that multicolored chalk looks good against a dark background.

[Asmodean_]

Ipads in schools.

Just... no.

Just because the possibility is there doesn't mean it should be taken. Sure, a couple of computer rooms won't do any harm, but most hours of the day people should be writing down notes, not going on coolmathgames.com or whatever site hasn't been blocked yet.

[2D8HP]

The rusty metal play structures over concrete, instead of the plastic over rubber that they have today.

I say my First grade classmates head split and gush blood all over at the schoolyard back in '75.

Now that's the magic of childhood!

I actually found one like it (just outside of Alta Bates Hospital) this last decade, so that my son could play '70's style (terrifying).

[SirKazum]

Ipads in schools.

Just... no.

Just because the possibility is there doesn't mean it should be taken. Sure, a couple of computer rooms won't do any harm, but most hours of the day people should be writing down notes, not going on coolmathgames.com or whatever site hasn't been blocked yet.

That's the sort of thing that sounds great on paper (students are directly engaged rather than passively listening!) but could be really crappy in practice. Partly because of what you said, young people are used to using tablets for entertainment, and will try their darndest to do just that in class because that's just what people do. But beside that, I'm really skeptical about tablets and other informational resources being really used the way they should be, by changing the whole learning experience altogether. I mean, boring lecture-style classes are popular for a reason - they're easy, and the most obvious (and therefore intellectually lazy) way to go about things. And people naturally tend to be intellectually lazy unless forced not to. So (and speaking as someone with no direct experience on the matter) I suspect very few schools use tablets to do things that books and notebooks can't (i.e. using them just to read material and do written assignments).

The rusty metal play structures over concrete, instead of the plastic over rubber that they have today.

I say my First grade classmates head split and gush blood all over at the schoolyard back in '75.

Now that's the magic of childhood!

I actually found one like it (just outside of Alta Bates Hospital) this last decade, so that my son could play '70's style (terrifying).

Uh... not sure if you mean that as a nostalgic thing or if you're glad it changed But the unsafe ways children played back in the day did result in a lot of memorable stories, that's for sure...

[Winter_Wolf]

The thing about handing out tech to kids, they very quickly become better at it than the people at the school who hand it out. My kid's school district had to disable their whole email system because high school kid(s) pwned the handlers something fierce. Just rekt the IT on staff.

Put me down for chalk and blackboard. And actual paper notebooks. The only thing that kept me engaged in class was being able to be engaged in drawing in the margins, because the classes were so freaking slow. And I'm no genius, I just had to move at the pace of the teachers, and they had to move at the pace of the stupid kids of the class. In fairness, though, those same kids emerge superstars in shop and welding classes and I was the stupid one. On the other hand, no one accidentally lost a finger or set themselves on fire accidentally in math class. Chemistry had a few "adventures" though!

[golentan]

I grew up with blackboards. The sound of chalk on blackboard to my ears (which have always been able to pick up abnormally high pitched sounds) was PURE HELL. Every day was like Nails on Chalkboard screetching in miniature until middleschool, which used whiteboards. I would actually secretly wad up cotton so I could hear voices while blocking out some of the sound of the chalk, causing my ears to bleed and form these horrible blood-earwax crystalline scabs for a couple years, and it was preferable to the chalk for me.

Whiteboards for life.

[Algeh]

The thing I miss most about blackboards is that you could get a mounted rolled-up thing (like a map) to pull down over them that had a bunch of little holes in the shape of a grid. You could then powder the thing with your chalk-filled erasers, roll it back up, and have grid lines on your blackboard in chalk powder.

Now I end up projecting a grid using a data projector, but it's not the same...

[Strigon]

The thing I miss most about blackboards is that you could get a mounted rolled-up thing (like a map) to pull down over them that had a bunch of little holes in the shape of a grid. You could then powder the thing with your chalk-filled erasers, roll it back up, and have grid lines on your blackboard in chalk powder.

Now I end up projecting a grid using a data projector, but it's not the same...

I remember the first time I saw that.
It was sorcery.

[SirKazum]

The thing I miss most about blackboards is that you could get a mounted rolled-up thing (like a map) to pull down over them that had a bunch of little holes in the shape of a grid. You could then powder the thing with your chalk-filled erasers, roll it back up, and have grid lines on your blackboard in chalk powder.

Now I end up projecting a grid using a data projector, but it's not the same...

Never saw that... sounds really cool!

[Grytorm]

Also, I never lived with chalkboards, but I doubt they have the problem of being impossible to see like whiteboards part of the time. Or for the next few weeks clear plastic windows.

[Saint Jimmy]

That's the sort of thing that sounds great on paper (students are directly engaged rather than passively listening!) but could be really crappy in practice.

Yeah, they are. Coming from someone who's school has them for middle school, maybe about 70% of the kids in my social studies class were actually doing their work and not watching movies, playing games, doodling, etc. And this was in the class with (in my opinion) made an already interesting curriculum much, much better.

[Donnadogsoth]

...when blackboard and chalk are replaced with whiteboard and dry-erase markers.

I don't know... it's the hiss of chalk, instead of the squeak of markers. The rough and grainy texture of the lines. The slight, ghostly remains of past scribblings that stay after you erase. Teachers always picking a student to erase for them (probably because of the chalk dust). Hell, even the chalk dust that gets everywhere. Banging erasers (on the board, on the support, banging two erasers together) to get the excess dust out. Blowing chalk dust out of the support and all over the floor

Of course, I'm aware that all of that is nothing but pure nostalgia, that it probably sounds insane to people raised in the whiteboard era, and that markers are much more practical, leave much less of a mess, and are probably better for the teacher's health (all that chalk dust in their lungs can't be good). But it just feels like it's missing something... you know? It's too clean. Too sterile. Blackboard and chalk feel more real to me.

What do you think about that? And any other cranky-old-person attachments to things that don't make much practical sense today but just feel better, that you want to share? (Needless to say, mind the forum policies and keep this non-political.)

When in doubt, preserve the old ways. They ground us. The drive to make everything new is, I would agree, a sterilising process, detaching us from older generations' lived experience.

[Liquor Box]

The rusty metal play structures over concrete, instead of the plastic over rubber that they have today.

I say my First grade classmates head split and gush blood all over at the schoolyard back in '75.

Now that's the magic of childhood!

I actually found one like it (just outside of Alta Bates Hospital) this last decade, so that my son could play '70's style (terrifying).

I do think the trend toward safety trumping all other concerns over the past few decades is not the universally positive thing that some people believe it to be.

Nothing wrong with putting plastic padding on the playground floor, but some schools d away with jungle gyms, and school towers altogether because of the safety risk. Also bullrush was the best schoolyard game ever, but has come to be banned in many schools.

[Knaight]

I'm all about actual paper notebooks over tablets, but the near complete replacement of chalk boards is a beautiful thing. I get the effect of nails on a chalkboard when nails are substituted with chalk, and it's just awful.

[Sajiri]

As someone who grew up with chalkboards but now works in schools with whiteboards...I never want to go back to the chalkboards. Never. Ever. Also even working in the good school I do, I wouldn't say those classes are sterile. There's a reason the teacher has to keep a bottle of handsoap on her desk

The ipads in school I was iffy about as well but I dont mind them. The first-graders I work with get 1 hour a week with them, I don't know how other schools handle them but at least in mine they have actual math programs, and when they correctly do x amount of problems they get rewarded with a 1 minute game (still math or language related, but they think its fun) before they are presented with a new set of problems. Have you tried keeping 20-30 kids at once all focused on and finishing their math problems? Those games are still learning but they take it as a reward, so they do actually get through all their problems just to reach the games. I like it, because it's easy to set up each device with different levels of problems, rather than having to split the kids up into different groups and have a dozen sets of worksheets for those that can't handle problems as advanced as some other kids.

They still do plenty of writing with pencils and papers (I spent two hours with a group of 6 kids today just working on their handwriting because they cant just rely on phones and computers and need to learn to write legibly) and have plenty of lecture style lessons, but having some time on tech, in a world that relies so heavily on it, is just as worthwhile in my opinion. At least, I work in the same school I went to as a student when I was a kid, and comparing what I learned there 20 years ago to what they do now I think it's great.

[Corlindale]

I have worked as a teacher for 5 years and I think I've tried every conceivable setup. You should try sitting in on a teacher meeting discussing what's best, though - it almost reaches civil war levels!

I prefer whiteboards to chalkboards. Sure, chalkboard's have that old-school charm, but they do make more noise and you get chalk everywhere. Whiteboards are silent, clean (unless you try to replace the ink in a marker you thought was empty but really wasn't...) and you can write in multiple colours.

Not a big fan of so-called Smart-boards. Maybe I just never learned to use them properly, but the writing area always seemed really small and what you wrote never looked all that good.

I think my last school had the ideal setup. A huuuuge whiteboard on the back wall, combined with a projector. That way you had a ton of area to write on, and even if you needed to project something you'd still have some normal whiteboard space to write on left. Or you could write directly onto the projected image, if you needed to highlight a part of the projection or something.

[Forrestfire]

Back when I was in high school, the school gave us all laptops to work with and take home. They had some "parental" type controls to keep people off gaming and porn sites, but overall were fairly open. The end result was that some students multitasked but most (I'd say like 80%ish) were generally on-task and focused, because of the massive benefits of having access to the internet during lessons.

Examples of benefits that come to mind:

• Science teachers giving a set of diagrams that students can scroll through to look at and read about while we're working on the topic in question's examples on the whiteboard or overhead.
• In English and History classes, having the ability to google what topic is being taught if a student is wondering something, then they can bring it up with the class to add to the discussion. In English especially, looking at translations and analyses of Shakespearean English helped with people's understandings of the plays we read.
• We had a class on life skills on computers, in particular being good at Microsoft Office, web searching, and research. You couldn't do that sort of lesson if you didn't have personalized access to that stuff, in particular projects and bookmarks people were working on with their own laptops.
• Us high schoolers got treated like they had responsibility (for the laptops), and so, we took responsibility.

There were plenty of other upsides, and occasional downsides, but overall, what it came down to the added freedom and interactivity in the lessons greatly increasing the ability of students to learn.

I expect that tablets would help in a similar way, while also adding, especially for younger kids, a better way to do hands-on learning through apps.

On the main topic: chalkboards hurt my ears and give me a headache. Whiteboards have some downsides in comparison but as long as you keep decent markers around I like them way better.

(Also, yes, I gotta say SmartBoards were always useless. Way too small of a writing space and just really awkward to use.)

[Serpentine]

Meh. People have been complaining about change for as long as we've been able to record people complaining about change - and no doubt there were complaints about that, too.

[SirKazum]

Also even working in the good school I do, I wouldn't say those classes are sterile. There's a reason the teacher has to keep a bottle of handsoap on her desk

(...) having some time on tech, in a world that relies so heavily on it, is just as worthwhile in my opinion.

Yeah, I know classrooms in general are hardly sterile, just saying that's the feeling that whiteboards evoke

And as for the second bit, I couldn't agree more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the "everything was better back in the day" type. I realize the world has changed a lot and will change much more than that in the coming years, and the skills necessary to navigate and thrive in it are also changing. That it's less about hoarding data in your mind and more about knowing how to find it, as well as training your mind to think better about what you see... and that tech is extremely invaluable in learning that. As I've said before, my biggest misgiving about tech in schools is skepticism about whether people actually use it to revolutionize how learning is done, or just as a new way to do the same old things (as well as causing students to focus less due to distraction). But, if it's actually working well as people here indicate, then I'm all for it.

• Science teachers giving a set of diagrams that students can scroll through to look at and read about while we're working on the topic in question's examples on the whiteboard or overhead.
• In English and History classes, having the ability to google what topic is being taught if a student is wondering something, then they can bring it up with the class to add to the discussion. In English especially, looking at translations and analyses of Shakespearean English helped with people's understandings of the plays we read.
• We had a class on life skills on computers, in particular being good at Microsoft Office, web searching, and research. You couldn't do that sort of lesson if you didn't have personalized access to that stuff, in particular projects and bookmarks people were working on with their own laptops.
• Us high schoolers got treated like they had responsibility (for the laptops), and so, we took responsibility.

See, this is what I mean. Back in my school days, whatever few computer lab days we had (it was a long time ago, alright) were mostly just an excuse so the school could say "hey we got computers, look at how modern we are", and students would just putz around doing whatever. I mean, in theory that's good on its own (getting them used to computers), but when "whatever" is just playing the same games and looking at diskette porn (long time ago, remember), I'm skeptical of the benefits. But if it can work as you say... yeah, I can see how it's indispensable.

Meh. People have been complaining about change for as long as we've been able to record people complaining about change - and no doubt there were complaints about that, too.

Oh, I have no doubt about that. The world has been going to hell in a handbasket with the new generation that doesn't know the first thing about anything mucking everything up at least since the oldest surviving writings complex enough to express that notion. Since a constant state of ever greater catastrophic collapse lasting for thousands of years doesn't seem very practical, I agree that complaining about the direction things are taking and pining for the "good old days" is pure BS.

Myself, most of the time I'm extremely excited about progress and about what the future holds. I just find myself clinging to the aesthetics of the past sometimes - especially in music and architecture. It was only yesterday that I realized I also miss chalkboards. (For curiosity's sake, it came to me during meditation - as I visualized erasing my thoughts from a board and writing my mantra, I realized I couldn't picture doing that on anything other than a chalkboard.)

And I'm seeing a lot of people here complaining about the "nails on chalkboard" effect... that never bothered me, but then again, my hearing's never been that good. Guess I can chalk that up (heh) to "problems you don't realize other people have". In that case, at least for those people, I'm glad an alternative came along that doesn't cause them suffering.

[Peelee]

When in doubt, preserve the old ways. They ground us. The drive to make everything new is, I would agree, a sterilising process, detaching us from older generations' lived experience.

I, too, yearn for the days of not being able to phone for help when stranded on the roadside. Or, for that matter, walking everywhere instead of having these clunky cars. Unanaesthetized surgery. Hunting and gathering. Phooey upon all of science, I say! I'll never connect to the living experience of having to kill my own dinner and then eating it without cooking, for this antiseptic world has too far disconnected me from the past.

[Donnadogsoth]

I, too, yearn for the days of not being able to phone for help when stranded on the roadside. Or, for that matter, walking everywhere instead of having these clunky cars. Unanaesthetized surgery. Hunting and gathering. Phoney upon all of science, I say! I'll never connect to the living experience of having to kill my own dinner and then eating it without cooking, for this antiseptic world has too far disconnected me from the past.

There will always be holes in any society where people will fall through. In the old days it was not finding a telephone booth when you need it, now it's no signal. In the old days we risked oil lamps, now it's power outages. In the old days it was playing doctor, now it's sextortion. In the old days there was the village gossip, now it's doxing. Are these all improvements?

My point is, pain, anguish, and inconvenience will always be with us, so long as men are fallen. Technologism will not save us from ourselves, but philosophy can reconcile ourselves to our condition whilst recommending when tradition can be augmented with selective technical solutions.

[Cazero]

I have asthma and allergies. Chalk and it's dust can go to hell.

[AuthorGirl]

Y'all's school memories are incomprehensible to me - homeschool for the win.

On blackboards vs. whiteboards, though - blackboards are way easier to read from across a room. Whiteboards are shiny and the markers tend to leave lines that are just slightly too pale, at least for my eyes. However, the squeaking drives me crazy (yes, I am one of those people who insist that certain computer monitors emit a constant, buzzing whine). Also, as someone with asthma, I really like the fact that whiteboard markers don't shed chalk dust everywhere. For me, whiteboards come out on top: they may not serve their intended function as well as blackboards do, but they have fewer undesirable "side effects."

[Vinyadan]

I didn't see any problem with chalk when I was a kid. I did when I was older and got into a room where air was unbreathable with chalk. I am not sure that modern pens don't stink or aren't poisonous, and they need a lot of care compared to chalk, but it probably is an improvement.

I am against any electronic device in the classroom, if brought by the kids (and isn't due to important issues, like health). I think that it's difficult to tell the parents that their children shouldn't be able to contact them from whatever place they are in. Smartphones etc are just too distracting. The fun part is how Silicon Valley employees send their children to a school where no electronic devices are used. https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-...-valley-london

I think that using computers is just too procedural. Real life is much more fluid. There's also something about being able to read a text that isn't interactive. But the most important thing is imho just how disrupting computers can be, if paired with internet, games, and so on.

[manyslayer]

As someone that writes web-based applications for school districts and whose wife is an assistant teacher, I may have biased opinions.

Whiteboards over chalkboards forever. No chalk dust being the number one reason. But, for someone that knows how to use one as more than a white board, a smartboard is phenomenal. Most teachers don't do much with them but when a teacher goes out to learn what can be done with one (rather than being upset about change) they can do really great, immersive things that bring the students into the lesson. My wife has worked with both kinds of teachers and was very impressed by the one that made full use of the smart board. My oldest son is in special education and the smart board was a great way for kids that might have difficulty manipulating a mouse or keyboard to be able to interact with the technology.

My youngest son has a laptop in school (going into 8th grade this fall) and he has used it for school projects but it does seem mainly for approved games during down time (or at least that's what eh tells me about). I think there is incredible potential but until districts and educators embrace them as more than "look at our cool tech stuff" a lot of it will be missed. But, even just granting access to those students that might not have it at home (either not having a good computer, internet, or even just not time on one if a large family shares only one or two machines) I think goes a long way towards making students comfortable with technology.

[Knaight]

There will always be holes in any society where people will fall through. In the old days it was not finding a telephone booth when you need it, now it's no signal. In the old days we risked oil lamps, now it's power outages. In the old days it was playing doctor, now it's sextortion. In the old days there was the village gossip, now it's doxing. Are these all improvements?

Yes, there will always be holes. The actual size of these holes can vary - oil lamps had a tendency to cause fires, with house fires being far more common and the ocassional (but much less occasional) city fire. Power outages kill vastly fewer people, and trying to treat the two as equivalent because "there will always be holes" is downright dishonest. I also can't help but notice that you didn't even touch the "unanaesthatized surgery" or "uncooked food" examples in the quote - probably because the holes there have gone from incredibly painful surgical procedures across the board with a tendency for people to get infected and die to the occasional screwup, and from people routinely harboring all sorts of parasites to the occasional case of food poisoning, with life expectancy increasing by decades. Of course, people do still die eventually, so I guess "there will always be holes".

[Peelee]

There will always be holes in any society where people will fall through. In the old days it was not finding a telephone booth when you need it, now it's no signal. In the old days we risked oil lamps, now it's power outages. In the old days it was playing doctor, now it's sextortion. In the old days there was the village gossip, now it's doxing. Are these all improvements?

My point is, pain, anguish, and inconvenience will always be with us, so long as men are fallen. Technologism will not save us from ourselves, but philosophy can reconcile ourselves to our condition whilst recommending when tradition can be augmented with selective technical solutions.

In the old days, infant mortality was sky high. In the old days, contracting polio was a legitimate concern. In the old days, easily meeting people who share your hobbies or likes was more difficult.

I'm not saying that technology improves our lives in every possible way. However, "when in doubt, keep the old way" is not a catch-all metric. Society advanced and betters itself. We live longer, on average. We live better lives, on average. We have more knowledge and can explore more of the universe, on average. We have walked on the freaking moon. I can sit here comfortably in Alabama summer and talk to someone who-knows-where instantaneously over the merits of sticking to the old ways vs. embracing the new.

Pain, anguish, and inconvenience may still be with us, but we are now much more able to control it. Instead of being dead because my appendix went bad, I am alive and happy with miniscule scars because we figured out how to take it out. Instead of dealing with chronic back pain when my crappy back decides it hates me, I can pop a couple of pills and keep going on with my day. Instead of being a bachelor because I don't like going out a lot and never had any attraction to people I knew in person, I was able to find someone I love over a magic box.

If your criteria here is, "if it's not perfect, then it's not better," you're not really arguing in good faith here.

You can have your old ways all you want. I'll go for the objectively better life.

[Aedilred]

...when blackboard and chalk are replaced with whiteboard and dry-erase markers.

I don't know... it's the hiss of chalk, instead of the squeak of markers. The rough and grainy texture of the lines. The slight, ghostly remains of past scribblings that stay after you erase. Teachers always picking a student to erase for them (probably because of the chalk dust). Hell, even the chalk dust that gets everywhere. Banging erasers (on the board, on the support, banging two erasers together) to get the excess dust out. Blowing chalk dust out of the support and all over the floor

Of course, I'm aware that all of that is nothing but pure nostalgia, that it probably sounds insane to people raised in the whiteboard era, and that markers are much more practical, leave much less of a mess, and are probably better for the teacher's health (all that chalk dust in their lungs can't be good). But it just feels like it's missing something... you know? It's too clean. Too sterile. Blackboard and chalk feel more real to me.

What do you think about that? And any other cranky-old-person attachments to things that don't make much practical sense today but just feel better, that you want to share? (Needless to say, mind the forum policies and keep this non-political.)

Although there is a nostalgia factor associated with blackboards and chalk, I do think that whiteboards are objectively superior (provided the pens work, and/or are not permanent markers; both these things have been problems for my educators more often than one feels they should have been). Besides, when anyone mentions the sound of blackboards, what I remember is the handful of teachers who specialised in raising a teeth-aching screech with the chalk, which was pretty awful.

Many of the "new" techno-features in schools are problematic because people aren't actually interested in what it could do, and use it as a - generally inferior and somewhat gimmicky - substitute for existing facilities. I'm sure there is a productive way to incorporate tablets or other personal digital equipment into formal teaching, but we haven't hit on it yet. Instead they just make things worse - and that's just when they're being used "officially": I've heard more stories than I'd care to from teaching staff about how kids of a certain age just sit in class watching porn on their tablets, which the staff have no productive recourse to stop.

Perhaps the most egregious offender in this regard for years has been Powerpoint and its ilk. Not confined to the classroom, of course, but something which should be a huge boon to the education profession is really more of a curse because people don't understand how to present using it. At all levels people sit through soul-crushingly terrible lectures/classes/seminars which would be immeasurably improved by delivering exactly the same content but just turning the projector off.

Another problem of course is that teachers are often not particularly tech-savvy, often less so than the children they're teaching, even where they are prepared to put the effort in to try to use the resources as intended. The marginal improvements made by having technological assistance in the classroom are generally more than compensated by the time it takes the staff to deploy those resources. This isn't just a problem with the current generation, either: it's going to be a problem forever, at least as long as technology keeps moving forward and people want to incorporate it in the classroom. Teachers at my schools used to struggle with VCRs.

As someone alluded to earlier, some of the problem with change and introducing new features is not that it's a revolution, but that it's not revolutionary enough.

[Strigon]

I, too, yearn for the days of not being able to phone for help when stranded on the roadside. Or, for that matter, walking everywhere instead of having these clunky cars. Unanaesthetized surgery. Hunting and gathering. Phoney upon all of science, I say! I'll never connect to the living experience of having to kill my own dinner and then eating it without cooking, for this antiseptic world has too far disconnected me from the past.

I mean, the original statement was "when in doubt".
Do people really doubt anaesthetics? Farming? Cooking? Because I've never met these people, and I feel quite happy labelling them as an overwhelming minority.