Edtech, Edinburgh and the blackboard.
“In the early 1800s, slate blackboards represented change. For centuries, students had used handheld tablets of wood or slate. Teachers moved about their classrooms, writing instructions and inspecting students’ work on individual slates. When the Scottish educational reformer James Pillans became the rector of Edinburgh High School, in 1810, his use of a blackboard was revolutionary. He explains in an 1856 memoir, Contributions to the Cause of Education:
I placed before my pupils, instead of a crowded and perplexing map, a large black board, having an unpolished non-reflecting surface, on which was inscribed in bold relief a delineation of the country, with its mountains, rivers, lakes, cities, and towns of note. The delineation was executed with chalks of different colours.
Widely recognized as the inventor of the blackboard, Pillans doesn’t specify how he constructed the apparatus……Pillans used his innovation to teach Greek as well as geography, noting,
The very novelty of all looking on one board, instead of each on his own book, had its effect in sustaining attention.”
Sounds familiar.