Quick… what’s the first thing you think of when you picture a traditional classroom? For many of us, we picture the chalkboard, which has been a fixture (pun intended) in schoolrooms since the early 19th century. Originally made of wooden boards painted black, then later of slate and synthetics, the chalkboard both enabled and cemented an industrial age teaching style.
Last year, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History hosted an exhibit entitled “Slates, Slide Rules & Software: Teaching Math in America“. Although the physical exhibit has since closed, the virtual exhibit remains, and is an interesting look at how technology has shaped and been shaped by education.
Even in today’s wired classroom, the chalkboard and its descendant, the whiteboard, still remain the focal point of classroom education. The New York Times has an article [Registration req'd] reviewing some of the more recent advances in classroom display technology. (One product they neglect to mention is Mimio, a simple, relatively inexpensive method for sharing whiteboards, and the only one I’ve actually used.)
As classrooms become more dispersed in space and time, the method for shared displays will have to change, too. Although there is no shortage of virtual chalkboard progrtams (Groupboard offers both free and low-cost shared whiteboards in a hosted Java applet), I wonder whether the chalkboard metaphor should remain at the center of the 21st century learning experience.