Mathematician Chalks Up Case for Retaining Blackboards

December 9, 2010

The blackboard in the mathematics classroom is not yet a dinosaur.

Blackboards "have served a very useful purpose for an incredibly long time," observed mathematics professor Keith Stroyan, gesturing towards a 100-year-old example in his office at the University of Iowa. "The point is they work, and marker boards do not," he claimed. "Why throw away a slate chalkboard? It is wasteful."

Stroyan's support of the boards, so to speak, is linked to their functionality, the fact that they are easier to clean than whiteboards—and his efforts to ensure their place in the university's new math tutoring laboratory, which is slated to open in spring 2011.

The lab will contain group tables for four-person study sections, mathematics literature, and teaching assistants to help students with problems, said Yi Li, head of IU's mathematics department. Li said officials decided to retain blackboards because they are a way to "exchange an idea spontaneously."

Bonnie Sunstein noted something else. "There is something about the connection people make to their material artifacts that creates their history, so it is not a surprise the math department doesn't want to get rid of its blackboards. Think of all the great thinking that gets done on those boards," she said.

Source: The Daily Iowan (December 1, 2010)