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Welcome to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary!
Welcome to Becoming Sage, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary! My name is Elan Baumgarten. This is the sixth episode, so let's take a deep dive into a classroom staple that has been around, in one form or another, since the dawn of modern education. The blackboard. It revolutionized the efficiency and ability to teach children in schools. Before these slates were invented by James Pillans in the year 1800, students and teachers relied on paper and ink to work. This Headmaster of the Old High School of Edinburgh in Scotland revolutionized more than just his school. Only a year later in 1801 George Baron, a mathematics professor at West Point would use a series of interconnected slates to write complex mathematical formulas for a much larger audience. By 1809, the entire city of Philadelphia had implemented these slates into use. By 1815, they had their first name: The Blackboard. The reason that the invention of the blackboard was so critical to the future of classroom education is not because they allowed for a better view of the topics, but because they gave a center point of focus to students. It allowed the teachers to captivate the minds of their students with the material, instead of just telling it to them. In the early 19th Century every board was constructed from scratch, and more times than most, rural schools didn’t have the same access to materials as other more urban environments. This meant that a lot of the time board materials were improvised. By the time the 1840s rolled around, blackboards were being produced industrially, and every school in America was using the blackboard. These industrially produced blackboards weren’t actually made of slate, but wooden boards covered with a Porcelain-based paint. As you might well be able to imagine, these didn’t last very long. That’s why the turn of the Century saw blackboards made out of porcelain-enameled steel. These new boards lasted 10-20 years. That’s insane when you think about school computers that likely have to be replaced every few years. Black was the original color of the -black- board, but after the 1930s green became much more common as it heavily reduced the glare. This evolution of the blackboard prompted the new name: Chalkboard. Now, what are these chalkboards utterly useless without? We will get to that in a minute, but first make sure you are following us on whatever streaming platform you use, and give us a download so that you can listen from anywhere in the world, even in that pesky deadzone! Now, what is needed for the chalkboards? Well… chalk of course! And, it existed long before the blackboard. Gypsum is the actual name of the chalk that we use on blackboards and chalkboards. Gypsum is the dihydrate form of Calcium Sulfate. You can find it in the ground, and can be used as chalk right out of the earth! While chalkboards have ruled the realm of classroom education for well over a hundred years, in the last few decades though, we use something very different: The Whiteboard. The invention of this educational masterpiece is accredited to Martin Heit and Albert Stallion. Heit was a professional photographer. He got the idea for whiteboards from when he would write on the thousands of film negatives that he had, whilst talking to clients. They worked as the perfect erasable notepad. Instead of developing this idea himself, he sold it to Dri-Mark, the company that would first produce whiteboards in the 60s. They really swept the education system of chalkboards in the 90s. The largest factor that limited these boards was how inconvenient it was to obtain the proper writing utensils. In 1975, Jerry Woolf would invent the dry erase marker, which was a major turning point for the whiteboards. The health risk factors of chalkboards led to the wider use of whiteboards in classrooms. The chalk was very bad for the lungs of students. Not all whiteboards were the same, and they most certainly did not all maintain the same quality, especially as they were much more expensive than chalkboards. It wasn’t uncommon for the boards to be made out of high-pressure laminates. Today, even whiteboards are seeing limited use in classrooms. Many schools, especially in more affluent areas, have switched to the use of smart boards. They allow teachers to have timers, internet projection, and whiteboard features, all in one. While they might be much more multi-functional, the extremely high costs still limit them for almost all schools, so whiteboards are still very important for the classroom. Thank you for listening to Becoming Sage. My name is Elan Baumgarten. Make sure to tune in next time to hear the ordinary become extraordinary. Don’t forget to download to listen anywhere in the world, and follow us to be alerted of the next time we push out a new episode!