Ed Week: Whiteboards Impact on Teaching Seen as Uneven

The story is here.

On the con side: Whiteboards are expensive, so is the training for teachers, and many teachers never use it.

On the pro side: If you use one enough, it greatly enhances the way lessons are taught in a classroom.

For the record, I used a Whiteboard/SMART Board during my student teaching, and was greatly spoiled by it. In my classroom now, I use a good-old chalk board. Because of the likely budget cuts, it doesn't look like I will be using a SMART Board anytime soon. For those teachers that have a SMART Board, and don't really use it, I have this to say:

COME ON! Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have that piece of technology in your own room? If you won't use it, give it to teachers that will (like me).

Obsolete Items

Huffington Post posts 12 items that have become obsolete in the past decade. Some items really are obsolete (dial-up internet, encyclopedias); some, I would argue, are on their way to becoming obsolete (landline phones, yellow pages); and some are actually still in wide usage (fax machines).

A couple of other quick points from this article:

-Since when did "calling" become obsolete? I know we have IM, text messaging, and other forms of instant communication, but come on.

-Classified ads are one of the items on this list. I recently taught my Vocational Skills class the importance of classified ads, and even had them do an activity where they decode the abbreviations from different classified ad samples. Next time I teach the class, I will probably focus more on using the internet to look for jobs.