Traditional Blackboard Learning to the Umpteenth Power
It’s true, we have come a long way from the individual chalk
slates held by individual students in a one-room school house with dirt floors,
a choking pot-bellied stove, curtain-less windows, and one person knowledgeable
enough to teach manifold subject range to a class of all ages packed into one
room. Blackboard learning was one of the first tools (after hundreds of
years of sticks in the dirt learning, etc., of course) that had a particular
educational appeal. That is, blackboard learning was effective as a visual
aid for visual learners, those in the largest learning style group of all.
With visual learning styles outnumbering verbal, kinesthetic, sensing, intuitive,
and other less frequently extant styles, blackboard learning has been augmented
by educators using slide shows, reel-to-real films projected onto pull-down
screens, LD and DVD materials, and computer hardware and software presentation
tools.
Oh, and blackboard learning went through a revolutionary (or evolutionary) change
when whiteboards with erasable markers and easels, presentation pads, and markers
were thought to enhance the learning experience.
But the internet changed traditional blackboard learning for good. Without
eliminating it as a tool that continues to be effective for a majority of learners,
the net capabilities and resources spawned a new kind of learning tool—distance
learning. Actually these facilities have not really created a new tool
(as distance learning has existed for hundreds of years) and they have not replaced
effective learning/teaching strategies. These technological advances have
enhanced and supplemented and made more available and accessible blackboard
learning. In fact, one online system is called the Blackboard Learning
System—one which allows learners to study in a virtual classroom, watching
the classroom lectures and sessions by closed-circuit and other media online;
which enables continued learning by chat, IM, email, and forum discussion with
peers and tutors; which administers and requires online testing; and which provides
supplemental materials such as Quicktime movies, downloadable video-recorded
lectures, and numerous interactive software systems.
Blackboard learning isn’t going anywhere. It is instead going through
exponentially enhanced phases that enhance the learning experience for all.
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