Blackboards, Smartboards & Heartboards

Ed-tech has come a long way since blackboards, chalk and white dust. Today’s Old Testament reading mentions something rather novel: the heartboard. 

“School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule days …”

If you remember that old song it means you’re, well, old; and that means you’re at least old enough to recall when the front of your school classroom featured a big blackboard on which all of your assignments for reading, writing and 'rithmetic were carefully inscribed by your teacher with chalk.

In fact, you might’ve been the good kid who got the special privilege of cleaning the erasers by banging them together, creating a cloud of chalk dust which had everyone coughing for five minutes.

Or maybe you were the bad kid who got after-school detention and had to wipe down the whole board with a damp cloth. Whether you approached it for praise or punishment, or to work out that difficult math problem in front of the whole class, the blackboard was the nerve center of classroom life.

It still is to some degree, although kids today will never know the smell of a cloud of chalk. Instead, they...