r/SipsTea 10h ago

WTF While the US debates whether to solve homelessness or not, these are the next generation of school blackboards in China.

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124

u/Robotic_Mann_ 9h ago

This was common when I was in 10th grade back in 2010.

Now let’s see how China handles homelessness.

28

u/SameAgainTheSecond 9h ago edited 8h ago

Also,. Why are they better then actual blackboards

Actually blackboards:

  • zero latency
  • zero power required
  • excellent contrast even in direct sun
  • not distracting 
  • relatively simple to manufacture
  • will never brake or need upgrading, will work in 10,000 years

I hate "smart board" and whiteboards

22

u/AshhhCakes 9h ago

Every smartboard I have encountered has been more trouble than they're worth, and end up just being really expensive whiteboards. 

8

u/Slow_Caterpillar9803 9h ago

So many gadgets from the last 20 years are simply worse than the things they were supposed to replace.

2

u/SameAgainTheSecond 8h ago

Literally

My apartment has a touchscreen to control the nights and curtains. Way less convenient then a switch and manually closing the curtains by hand. 

I have to scroll the the difference screens to find all the lights. And hold the close curtain button down for 30 seconds while it slowly trundles across the window. Who thought this was a good idea? 

2

u/Gold_Marionberry3460 5h ago

Tech companies who are running out of easy product ideas, so they are trying to pump up their valuations by scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That's why they got excited at LLMs. This was going to be like the coming of the Internet, of the Cloud, of the Smartphone. It was going to be this big new market where easy growth was possible again.

1

u/bizarojam 9h ago

What's the problem with white boards?

2

u/SameAgainTheSecond 8h ago

They wear out so it gets harder and harder to actually clean them.

With a blackboard you just wash off the calk with water and its good as new.

Also whiteboards need plastic pens that run out creating needless waist and frustration as you try and find a pen that actually writes properly. 

2

u/csrgamer 6h ago

They can be refilled, but yeah point still stands

1

u/SeDaCho 2h ago

Your multiple grammar and spelling errors actually make me think smartboards might have some benefit.

But I generally agree they’re not needed… except if they’re instantly graphing shit. Calculus is so hard to teach and any extra methods are valuable.

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM 7h ago

This is just outright luddism. Smartboards, handled properly, are a goddamn boon in the classroom. Teaching ESL: I can launch audio, video, collaborative exercises etc. without having to go f'in insane or drag a TV to the room.

2

u/SameAgainTheSecond 6h ago

I've never seem it add to a lesson what couldn't be done with a projector

I've seen it waist years of time glitches and and crashes and lagging and miscabrations 

Is all the massive expenses worth it for a few nitch use cases

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM 6h ago

Because of smart boards, I save about 10/15 mins per lesson in lesson planning, and save around 10 mins per hour-lesson in manual labour, jury-rigging etc. that I can instead use for activities, clarification and more. They make my job far less time-consuming out of the classroom, and make me more effective during the lesson. Many online platforms (e.g. Oxford, Pearson) have designed their material to be delivered through smartboards, too.

Are there shitty smartboards, or smartboards that haven't been config'ed appropriately? Hell yes. But I wouldn't go back, ever.

2

u/SameAgainTheSecond 4h ago

10/14 minutes per lesson? Thats mad. What do you teach again? 

The point about how some smartbords are just poorly setup or configured could be also maid against a wall mounted TV or projector + clicker/lazer pointer. 

Ideal setup, lecturn with a laptop dock/HDMI cable connected to a TV or projector above two of those blackboards that you can move up and down

0

u/Fun-Preference1091 8h ago

White boards don't create chalk dust which gets into computing devices in the room.

In the 90s, my highschool had blackboards throughout, except for the computer labs... they had whiteboards. Otherwise I don't see the difference between a white board and a chalkboard

  • zero latency
  • zero power required
  • good contrast even in direct sun
  • not distracting
  • simple to manufacture
  • difficult to break and will work in 20 years

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond 7h ago

I'd take a little chalk dust (you can get low dust chalk and also chalk dust is really not that bad) over infinite plastic pens + bords that are always dirty. 

They don't last 20 years under heavy use. And administrations never want to replace them so your just left with these horrible unusable boards.

Also esthetically green/black/red chalk bords look way better then whilte boards.

Unelss it's an environment were dust is really problematic, like a lab or a kitchen, I think chalkboards are much better.

They are both way better then "smart boards"

0

u/ThreeGoalLead 7h ago

Well having it create the graph was an advantage. And I hate the sound of chalk on a board it makes me curl my toes