12 ms·
The Magic of the Blackboard
- WalterBright 3y agoHandouts and pdf files are poor ways to learn. Copying the blackboard onto paper with a pen as the prof scribbles on it is a much better way. Technology has not improved on the blackboard at all. The best presentation I've ever done was when the scheduled presenter never showed up. I volunteered. Having no slides, no preparation, I was faced with a white board and a dry-erase pen. Somehow, magic ensued. I've never felt that way with prepared slides and a video screen.
- mellow-lake-day 3y agoI disagree. Based on my uni experience classes with handouts and pdf files was where I learned the best. The problem with blackboard is that professors go faster than you copy and it ends up being that spend all your time trying to copy everything that you don't have time to even listen to the words that they are saying. And when you try to review the scribbles in your notebook it's hard to understand anything. A good set of slides with examples and annotations goes a long way. And to this day I have slides I saved that I still refer to.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoI HATED classes taught on a blackboard. I learnt nothing. Blackboard and chalk pedagogy is a technological artifact from the days it was economically infeasible to provide students with printed handouts.
- jacobolus 3y agoThe blackboard is a much more democratic, transparent, two-way tool: everything the teacher does the student can directly see and imitate. Watching someone reason with a writing implement in hand is an incredibly valuable learning exercise, since effective technical problem solving is largely done that way in practice. Students should also be practicing solving problems directly at the blackboard, with the teacher and other students as an audience. (Writing on an overhead projector or some kind of projected ipad screen or something could be an alternative, but these are higher-tech for no real advantages in an in-person lecture context, and make it much harder for multiple people to participate together. Writing on paper is an okay substitute if there are no more than about 3–4 students per teacher.) A handout or slides or video is an opaque one-way tool, a prepared polished document that students can see but typically have no easy way to imitate. It affords the lecturer more chance to put effort in up front into making a clearer document, but robs students of the chance to witness their teacher doing some of the work in real time, and ultimately leads to a relative loss of basic problem solving skills involving writing/drawing, trading them away in favor of immediate gratification. Sometimes this trade-off is worth it (e.g. Grant Sanderson's work largely couldn't be replaced by blackboard lectures https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw ), but when the school's entire pedagogy moves that way, the loss is tremendous in my opinion, an erosion of some core tools of a centuries-old mathematical/scientific culture.
- lisper 3y ago> Watching someone reason with a writing implement in hand is an incredibly valuable learning exercise, since effective technical problem solving is largely done that way in practice. I vehemently disagree. Classroom lectures almost always present results that are already in the bag. I can't remember a single class where a professor actually walked us through the process of figuring something out. The closest I've ever seen is 3blue1brown, and he obviously doesn't use a chalk board. Nowadays technical problems are often solved by writing code, which is almost never done on a chalk board outside of job interviews.
- jacobolus 3y agoEven when chalkboard lectures present material that was prepared in advance, there's a significant difference vs. prepared material presented in slides or a typeset document or a video. Writing imposes a speed limit on the lecturer, and forces them to verbalize the whole reasoning process. In slides it is much easier to skip past the meat of the work, and much harder to be responsive in writing/pictures to questions and discussion. > can't remember a single class where a professor actually walked us through the process of figuring something out This can't really be blamed on the tool of the chalkboard. I promise you this does happen in some classrooms. It certainly happens all the time in informal discussion between professionals. In my opinion schools should strive much harder to induct students into a problem-solving culture than teach specific content trivia. A blackboard is an invaluable tool for the former. > often solved by writing code Writing code is a narrow and constrained tool with much less freedom than writing on paper, and thoughts made first in code are substantially blinkered in my experience compared to thoughts worked through on paper. Many of the best programmers I know do their most important work on paper (sketching, planning, doodling, drawing diagrams, ...) before ever touching the keyboard. And that is far more true still for mathematicians, physicists, etc. What is true is that many programmers are not very effectively taught to use paper to its full advantage as a tool for thought, and either never learn or largely figure it out on their own. Our typical computer science pedagogy is frankly terrible at this, and professionals' on-the-job training isn't much better.
- 3y ago
- bayindirh 3y agoI don’t understand the rationale behind assuming everything old is worse than today’s methods, technology. I still get my pens and paper when I design a software or study something that I want to learn, and it works trillions times better than watching a video or going through some slides. I still produce my notes & documentation from books or existing material, and retain that knowledge almost indefinitely. There’s mounting evidence about both people have learning differences, and using pen and paper exercises the brain in a completely unique way. Ignoring this is pretty counterintuitive from my perspective.
- Tomte 3y agoBlackboard and chalk are an artifact of a time when students came to classes prepared and could follow.
- leidenfrost 3y agoThing is, making you write what you hear improves meomory and info retention and retrieval. PDFs Are a nice tool for the big books where you need lots of texts, images and diagrams. The scribbles are more for helping to remember past lectures. But when everything is a PDF, knowledge becomes too fleeting to even remember past the exams.
- jacobolus 3y agoPlease don't speak for everyone. I learn best from lectures by paying careful attention with my eyes and ears, and keeping the narrative flow structured in my brain; trying to write a substantial amount disrupts my focus and leads to dramatically worse understanding/retention. Other people learn best from lectures by writing everything down (but never looking at it again); just the act of writing helps them focus. Still others learn best from writing without worrying about understanding the first time, and then afterward repeatedly reading their written notes. (If I wanted to be e.g. an ethnographer or journalist, I would have to be the type to write notes after the conversation, rather than during.)
- IshKebab 3y agoI did engineering at Cambridge and they had the best solution to this problem: fill in the gaps notes. It might sound crazy but it has none of the downsides of no-notes or ready-made-notes. * you have to pay attention and turn up otherwise you end up with useless notes, so it still has the motivation factor of no-notes * you don't spend all your time copying so it doesn't suffer from the "I wrote it all down but I didn't listen to a word" factor of no-notes
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y agoAny examples ?
- IshKebab 3y agoNot the best example but here's one: https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/university-of-cambridge/1p2-structures/l9-l12-deflection/45014720 https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document/university-of-cambrid... Bit difficult to find because they aren't publicly available.
- darkerside 3y agoI think what may be the case is that blackboards are the best way to learn something you already loosely know. You can follow along and need to rapidly identify new information and compress that information down for your notes. But if you don't know it, yes, you will get lost and fall behind.
- maximus-decimus 3y agoThis, but I want to add that at least for my physics classes, blackboards add two sources of errors : the teachers mistranscribing their notes on the blackboard and me mistranscibing the notes from the blackboard. Especially bad when it's a bunch of formulas with greek letters and you can't tell the prof's alpha from a psy. On top of me not being able to listen, my notes were basically useless
- nyc111 3y agoI think the article is more about professional mathematicians communicating among themselves, not teaching in a classroom.
- kaashif 3y ago> Technology has not improved on the blackboard at all. I think whiteboards are an improvement on blackboards.
- jhbadger 3y agoExcept for the fact that 99% of the time when you pick up a whiteboard marker it is dried out. Chalk doesn't do that.
- criddell 3y agoAnd whiteboards eventually stop erasing well. There are some huge whiteboards at work that I’ve been trying to resuscitate but none of the remedies I’ve read about online work very well. Whiteboards seem to last 5-10 years, depending on usage.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoBlackboards also stop working eventually. What the means is that repeated writing, erasing, occasionally using water to clean them completely, makes tiny little holes in the paint. Then when you write, the chalk gets into the holes and it doesn't erase well with a standard eraser. So you have to use more water, which causes more damage... Blackboards in universities are often painted over with new paint after a few years. Of course, this is relatively simple maintenance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kaashif 3y agoI just really don't like chalk dust, others have a higher tolerance I think.
- ShadowBlades512 3y agoI don't agree either. I don't learn well in a classroom, I went through all of undergrad and grad school skipping every class and only depending on PDFs of lecture notes, PDFs of handouts and textbooks. Lectures, especially with blackboards were the absolute worst for me.
- readthenotes1 3y agoI know some people who just got through med school by reading, using Anki, and watching videos of past lectures at 2x speed. Lectures are a horrible way to learn and watching someone slowly write something down on a blackboard or whiteboard is a despicable use of a learner's time. For collaborations, things are entirely different of course
- krackers 3y agoToday we have the technology to do both: allow free-form drawing, while also recording a presentation and the scribbled content. You don't even need a fancy smart board, just an ipad projected works.
- WalterBright 3y agoToday we also have videotape. I wish all the lectures I attended had been taped. I'd like to retake those courses via the tape.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoI taught this way during the last part of Covid for a few courses and it doesn't work well. I am forced to stand (sometimes sit) in a single location, for a long time while I am writing. Its much harder to motivate students and keep them engaged in such a static manner. You need to move around the class, see the class from different perspectives [1]. You are alive, the students are alive. Also, you can't get students to come up to the board when using these fancy ipads and such. In my opinion, just video recording a blackboard lecture is the correct way to go. [1] You often don't see confused students from one vantage point. Walking around, that you do naturally while using a black/whiteboard or even when using slides lets you do that.
- wharvle 3y agoI can’t both listen well and take (extensive) notes. I have to pick one. Listening in class tends to be better, because then I can ask questions and will have followed along with what’s going on at least once. If the topic’s at all tricky for me, I will gain almost no understanding if I focus on notes instead, and sure, I’ll have notes, but I’ll otherwise be starting from scratch. I will not have followed what they’re about, when taking them.
- verve_rat 3y agoOnly if that works for you, though. For me to write stuff down in real time I basically have to turn off the understanding part of my brain and become a dumb pipe of sounds goes in ear to words on page. I can hear and write, or I can listen and learn, not both.
- practicemaths 3y agoMy Calculus Professor liked blackboards because he could slow the down material for everyone. He told me he started off with slides and stuff and thought it was going to be all slick and cool for everyone. Then he eventually realized it just goes through material too fast.
- dbrower 3y agoI was looking for the chalk v marker on whiteboard shootout, and it was conspicuous in absence.
- sibit 3y agoChalk is superior. You don't hear about anyone hoarding whiteboard markers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNUjg9X4g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNUjg9X4g8
- readthenotes1 3y agoI don't have to hear about people hoarding whiteboard markers, I see it all the time.
- idatum 3y agoI think this is when we know something is in the past: A nice tribute.
- stakhanov 3y agoI have a blackboard in my home office. I was quite surprised to find that a lot of them are available on e-bay and that they are quite cheap: I think, what happens is that, when schools get rid of them, teachers will sometimes take one home for their kids. Then, when the kids grow out of it, the blackboard ends up on e-bay. So, when I moved places, I used the opportunity that I already had a moving van rented and picked one up from someone selling one who was quite nearby, paying €50 for it. When I opened it, I realized that it had chalky deposits all over it that didn't go away with normal cleaning products. So I had to use a brush-bit for a power drill to scrub it clean. Then I found that I only have dry walls with hollow spaces beneath that can't carry the load (it weighs maybe around 100kg), so I made a technical drawing specifying a stand and went on etsy to look for a metal-worker who could make me that stand. All-in-all, it was just laying in a corner in my office for about a year until I finally finished the project of setting it up. So, it ended up being a lot more hassle than I thought it would be, but now I'm quite happy that I have it.
- bjornbsm 3y agoThere is paint that can make whatever you are painting supposedly gets a blackboard surface. Not much help for you but maybe to the interest for others.
- Tomte 3y agoI always wanted to have a blackboard at home, but I’ve been convinced the chalk dust makes it prohibitive.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoYou couldnt fasten it to the studs in your wall?
- galaxyLogic 3y agoYou remember something by putting some effort into working with it, and so writing down the content from blackboard is just such work. It is a bit similar to reading a wide-format newspaper than reading text on your smart-phone. larger area lets you see more at the same time, you don't have to go back to previous page so often.
- WalterBright 3y agoReading an article on a phone is something I'd only do if I had no alternative and really wanted to read it.
- bschne 3y agoMotivation is funny like that. I've struggled to work through a paper I didn't even want to understand but had to write an assignment about on an A4 eInk tabled or using the perfect note taking setup, but I've also read a full book and 10k+ words blogposts on my phone or filled in a PDF crossword by placing single-letter text boxes in preview on my mac.
- galaxyLogic 3y agoYes, reading something you are interested in and is readable, is easy. As a kid I used to consume Enid Blyton books without really being aware I was reading them or how much I had read, I was just "inside" them. I wasn't trying to read them, I just did.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- drewcoo 3y agoI remember being punished as a child and having to erase the things, then "clean" the erasers by pounding them together . . . surely a recipe for silicosis! ;-) The point is that cleaning the blackboard and the erasers wasn't "all you can eat cake." It was messy (hard one to explain to the parents!), sneezy drudgery.
- MatthiasWandel 3y agochalk isn't a silicate. It's calcium carbonate. So no worries about silicosis. I think otherwise it would have been banned from schools long ago.
- globular-toast 3y agoI've never really used a blackboard, but there's definitely something about physically writing on a surface that can be erased and rewritten at will. All electronic versions I've tried are a joke in comparison. I think the blackboard specifically is just something Hollywood likes and perhaps a few people's preference. But whiteboards are better really.
- hyperluz 3y agoRecently I bought a paper notebook and pens to make companion to my ipad+pencil+OneNote combo, for my Rust programming studies and anotations. Before buying the notebook I researched what kind of notebook Einstein used to work on. Spyral x brochure, kind of paper and size were considered. Something was off with the digital solution. I can't ellaborate exactly what was/is the problem, but I'm not abandning it. I use it when it feels more up to the task (ex:storing images and coying a big text from the internet).
- lencastre 3y agoEverybody has a preferred learning style but I agree that presentation handouts (assuming the slides are well designed/done and with enough space) are a great way to highlight and add your notes and pay attention to the oral explanations and reasoning instead of furiously writing/scribbling and sometimes deciphering the hieroglyphs the prof wrote scratched on the green blackboard.