http://www.iht.com/articles/83553.htmlFor article on how the old schoolroom blackboard is changing...now they're computerized!!!! There go our taxes again!
I've actually seen these in use - they are quite good if you want an instant record of what's been written - like in a "brainstorm" session, for instance. But I'm not sure that I see any great advantage in these gimmicks for teaching, as a rule. I use flip-charts a lot, and white-boards, rather than blackboards, but.
Our school completely changed to white boards a few years ago, and have recently installed three or four of these computerised 'smart boards'. They're quite good in some ways, like it can be used like a large TV screen for films and stuff, but mostly, the teachers don't get round to using them as they either can't, or don't have time to make the presentations and they tend to be a bit awkward to write on (bits keep getting deleted for some reason).
> bits keep getting deleted for some reason.
Right! I'm not familiar with those new boards but I'm a left-hander and when I have to sign for a package with one of those touch screens those UPS blokes have, I always somehow end up deleting what I've just written. Isn't progress great? And sarcastic cynical people? And posts that drag on? How long can I keep this up?
In the school district I worked in (and went to school in) there were I think 3 of those 3M boards stored in the tech department. Why they purchased them I have no idea because they were almost never used. I think they were intended for central office meetings more than classrooms though. All of the classrooms have dry-erase marker boards. When they built a new middle school a couple years ago, all of the rooms were equipped with a TV hooked up to a computer so the teacher could show PowerPoint presentations and websites. I think my little brother said that they've used them to show student-made PP assignments too.
In college the white boards are in all the classrooms, and most have projectors hooked up to a computer too. In my architecture seminars now the lectures are prepared by loading the images onto a website set up for the class. Each image is on a different page and during the lecture, they just click through them. It much easier for them to scan an image from a book and show it digitally than to waste time and resources making a slide out of it. The dry erase board is only used to show equations and calculations in my structures class and when my arch history prof decides she needs to draw 8 little dots to demonstrate the octostyle qualities of the Parthenon.
I love my white board! no more dried out hands and chalk dust on everything. my whiteboard has staff lines already printed on it which is very handy.
this is the thing I would like to have:
http://www.mimio.com/index.shtmlwould make it so easy to save all the notes(!) I write...
I only found out the other day that we've got one of these contraptions at work. I was doing some English language teaching and one of the lawyers asked me to print out what was on the whiteboard, and while I looked at him nonplussed, he walked over pressed the appropriate button and it did just that.
Bingley
It much easier for them to scan an image from a book and show it digitally than to waste time and resources making a slide out of it.Oh yeah? I bet I can make an overhead "slide" on the photocopier faster than your average professor can successfully scan in a figure from a book.
For $99 US you ca buy a digital camera and take a picture of your board.
Oh yeah? I bet I can make an overhead "slide" on the photocopier faster than your average professor can successfully scan in a figure from a book.
That's not what I mean. I'm talking about those little slides for slide projectors, the ones with big rotating cylinders. That's what artists used to (and sometimes still) do with their work to save a picture of it because you can project it to make it large rather than having a small photo of it. And that's what was generally used in art history classes. Plus, a digital image of it is more ecologically friendly than wasting a sheet of plastic.
And TEd, a digital camera image has depth, which distorts the text that would be on the board. Plus, the electronic white boards record directly to an image editing program and some of them even recognize handwriting, which can be directly inserted into a word processor document.
What I don't like is the entire board has staff lines on it. I wish there had been one section on which I could have more easily written script.yes! I've thought of buying a smaller, plain board, and having it up next to the big one.
Now, if I were super-organized (I'm not), I could put the entire lesson on Sibelius and WordPerfect--show it on the monitor in the music room. yes, again! though for me it would be Finale and Appleworks...
Oh yeah? I bet I can make an overhead "slide" on the photocopier faster than your average professor can successfully scan in a figure from a book
Sure, Bean, that's true - but using the scanner I can not only make acetate OHP "slides" of colour ophots (from books or anywhwere, but I can also select bits of the photo, leaving out the inappropriate parts of it.
I can also put digital images direct from my camera onto OHP acetates - which includes photos of 200 year-old documents that I have accessed at the Record Office.
Photocopying is great - simple and quick, but it is limited