Fun with Technology in the Classroom

No one will ever accuse me of being an up-to-date teacher.  Far too many teachers rely on technological doodads to cover up their complete ignorance of their subject material.  They will then huffily tell anyis is critic that they are keeping up with the times and that "kids don't need to know _________  because it's all available online."  This is the mental equivalent of a toupee.  Case in point: the young teacher with whom I worked a few years ago who honestly did not believe that there was such a thing as the second person, but who had a daily Power Point presentation for anything imaginable.  I still wonder what her presentations were actually about, since she clearly didn't know jack shit about her subject (which was, supposedly, English).

So it will not shock you that I cast a dim view at the myriad Google apps and smart boards and power points and other educational magic beans.  I'm sure they can be helpful, but they're not necessary and they get on my nerves.  I have enough to do without having to learn how to use all this crap.  You know what I can use? Chalk. And a blackboard.  My current school is old enough that the boards are indeed black.

There is one issue.  The erasers we have don't work.  Apparently if one MUST be so antediluvian as to use your hands to write something, for the love of all that is holy, one should do so on a white board. (This is a cultural flip--these days, people will do anything to deride white things in favor of black things, unless it's a writing surface...) So I have a white board which I loathe because chalk dust is easier to clean off the ass of my trousers than dry-erase marker, and also because dry erase markers have a life of approximately fourteen minutes.  I use the damn blackboard.  Except for how the erasers don't work.  Let me demonstrate:

I want one of those old felt jobs that you had to beat outside for hours, making everything in your vicinity white and yellow and unable to breathe. 

Or maybe I'm just really jazzed that I figured out how to post pictures on here.