Panic Attack: Chalk is the Technology in the classroom

I’m teaching as an adjunct at a community college which is part of the state system. I was shocked when I went into my classrooms and discovered that chalk was the technology. There was a dusty overhead in the corner. There was no computer and no LCD. For as many years as I can remember I’ve had a computer and projector in my classroom. Now when I want to use images in the classroom, color coded items in a paragraph, graphics to highlight a writing aspect, Youtube clips as a writing prompt, I cannot. Apparently, English teachers do not need technology. This English teacher does!

I am finding it very hard to go backward in terms of teaching. I’ve covered the chalkboard, erased it, and written over it again. So much wasted time. Each class is in a different room so I have to rewrite the same thing. I certainly am not going to write a long paragraph on the board.

I may have to  resort to buying transparencies so that at least I can show some items- about $1.50 per transparency. I may use up my pay for the courses just in transparencies.

I need  technology for my classroom so that I can spend more time teaching and less time writing on the chalkboard.

2 Responses to “Panic Attack: Chalk is the Technology in the classroom”


  1. 2 Andrew McCann September 17, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Wow, that looks easy…

    Seriously, I teach at a major regional PRIVATE university, and out of the hundreds of classrooms only about 30 or 40 have built in data projectors.

    I do a fair amount of consulting work in K12, and I’m always impressed at the technology available to teachers (Smartboards etc.).

    The worst thing about the classroom situation is that if I teach multiple sections of a course, I might not get all of them into a data projector room – so I have two preps (one chalk, one data projector).


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