Lewis Buzbee's The Simple Genius Of The Blackboard

1066 Words3 Pages

n the essay "The Simple Genius of the Blackboard: Why the board-centered classroom is still the best place to teach and learn," Lewis Buzbee talks about what the board in the front of the classrooms has represented in schools throughout the years. He narrates how the erasable slates from before the 1800’s have been developed into the big board found in front of classrooms; in 1800, a teacher connected all the erasable slates to allow a geographic map to be presented on a much bigger board, as well as in 1801 when another teacher connected them to write complex math formulas. After only few years, in 1815, they have been advanced into the blackboard that was first being manually manufactured, and by 1840 blackboards were being manufactured by …show more content…

For example, some teachers do not like to use any type of board; Buzbee is one of them. He said he does not have patience for handwriting on a big board and prefers to sit with his students around a big table and talk but sometimes he “can’t help himself and have to go to the whiteboard.” But also he argues: “Once I start on the board, I often can’t stop and continue to add phrases, strange pictures, the titles of books, sometimes just marks, a kind of visual punctuation. “ One thing comes off clearly: if teachers are not trained prior to using the today’s boards, the benefits in teaching cannot be guaranteed. Nevertheless, “Smart Boards--interactive whiteboards in general--are relatively easy to use. Testament to that is found in Kellie Gaffney 's classroom at Liberty Elementary School in Flower Mound, TX. Gaffney taught her students-kindergarteners--how to calibrate the board” ().Thus, each teacher will have to get a basic training on it. Teacher effectiveness is closely linked to the ability to use all forms of interaction possible in the context of education through the new technologies and, accordingly, to mastering the multimedia and communication involved. Today, 40 out of the 53 schools in Hazzard 's former district, the Lambton Kent District School Board in Ontario, Canada, have interactive whiteboards. And Hazzard, now an educational consultant, says teachers, seeing their students more engaged than ever, are clamoring for more. Grades have gone up; suspensions have gone down. At one point, Devine Street Public School, where Hazzard used to teach, actually had more suspensions than students. But this past year, it had only 20. And the learning community has widened: Hazzard shares whiteboard lessons with 1,500 teachers on his own

Open Document