In case you enjoy wandering about the net in search of insights into the explosion in the use of technology in conventional classrooms and industrial settings, YouTube should make you feel like the “kid inside the candy store.”
On a current go-to, we stumbled across something fascinating inside a video entitled A Vision of Students Today. A graphic towards the finish with the video displayed the following comment about a revolutionary breakthrough in educational technology in the classroom. Here may be the quote:
The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked amongst the ideal contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind.
The author of the statement was an American educator named Josiah Bumstead. The year was 1841. And what was the “system” of which he spoke? The humble blackboard/chalkboard!
A single could speculate that as far back as the time with the Ancient Egyptians, a couple of folks accountable for teaching realized the value in making use of visuals within the classrooms with the day, however, the technologies were not available. Pigments and wall drawings took time.
In that context, look at how revolutionary the advent of the chalkboard was. It freed great teachers in the prison of their lecture notes and allowed them to “think on their feet.”
When you consider back more than the course of your life towards the teachers who inspired you, amongst them, there was surely one or additional who were veritable wizards in the chalkboard.
They dazzled us with their enthusiasm along with the speed with which they displayed their words of wisdom for all to determine. What’s much more, from time to time they essentially asked for our input. Try to remember the thrill you felt the initial time your words appeared on the chalkboard? Superior teachers knew to not filter what we had to say. They accepted our thoughts and up they went on the board. And fantastic teachers gave us the ultimate thrill – the chance to create on the chalkboard ourselves.
It has extended been an axiom of educational practice that seeing words also as hearing them results in far better learning. Nowadays, research on how the brain learns confirms what lots of have believed for extra than a single hundred years – active involvement of students in the learning procedure facilitates learning.
In its day, your words appearing on a blackboard was an important facilitator. Brain-based analysis now tells us colors and sounds improve visuals even further. Though the cleaner and much more visually appealing eraser board lengthy ago replaced the chalkboard, it nonetheless lacks the appeal of a well-designed PowerPoint presentation. Or does it?
PowerPoint presentations together with the most dazzling graphics and sounds imaginable can nevertheless endure from 1 main drawback – whose words seem inside the presentation? In impact, the implication right here is the fact that in at the very least one aspect, students scribbling their thoughts on an eraser board is superior to a pre-prepared PowerPoint presentation.
And these days we have the twenty-first-century version in the chalkboard accessible to us – the Smartboard. In essence, it is a chalkboard linked to a personal computer. Should you have never heard of a single, or noticed what they’re able to do, spend a take a look at to YouTube and be prepared to become amazed.
