Comment by chermi
1 day ago
It's like writing on paper vs writing on a digital tablet. The difference in tactile feedback leads to better handwriting, at least for me.
I'm curious about the phenomenon they mentioned of "circles being smaller with markers". I definitely noticed that when teaching my overall font size decreased on markers vs. chalk, even when using the skinny chalks. But the effective tip size even with small chalk is larger than that of whiteboard markers. So I wonder if we had big ass whiteboards with big ass tips on the markers if the writing style would be more similar. Or if it's more a function of the resistance you get with chalk+chalkboard. Could we make a whiteboard+marker that had more resistance? Like some hall effect or something. Sounds too complex relative to just using chalkboards.
That being said, a downside I didn't see mentioned was chalk dust. I have asthma but still prefer chalk, but I did not appreciate having to pound the dust out of the erasers when I was in grade school. I wonder if they could make the chalk magnetic and have magnetic trap at the bottom or something. But again too complicated.
Any
> Could we make a whiteboard+marker that had more resistance? Like some hall effect or something. Sounds too complex relative to just using chalkboards.
I think that whiteboard vs chalkboard is just personal preference/cultural, and that the explanations in the article are just trying to justify it (which is totally fair IMHO). So I don't think that there's any need to "fix" that problem with whiteboards.
Magnetic dust would be worse news if it managed to get breathed in.
My hand writing is poor and my handwriting with a stylus is worse but screen annotations on zoom have been life changing for me at work. I don’t really care that I cannot write legibly. Quick iteration on diagrams is king.
The Russian solution is to use water - wipe the board with a wet sponge.
The german way seems to be a wet sponge followed by a squeegee to wipe off excess water. Here's a masterclass from Frederic Schuller (and a rigorous advanced course in quantum mechanics)
https://youtu.be/GbqA9Xn_iM0?si=Cy7EQOvPtoRqgmhc&t=1070
Germans also squeegee their blackboards.
In my school, the board was erased many times throughout the day with erasers, and then with water only at the end of the day so it would be "pristine" the next morning.
If you wipe with a sponge, you can't really go on to use it immediately can you? Like you can't write well on a moist chalkboard?
I had a great calculus prof who would wash all the chalkboards halfway through our (3-hour) class, and dismiss all the students for a 10-minute break while the boards dried.
I've had teachers that'd waft a binder at the board while continuing to talk. you can get a decent part of the chalk board dry in under a minute doing that. It's not like you're getting the board soaking wet either. A whiff of water is plenty to clean the board.
Edit: note you can also write on a wet chalkboard just fine. The tactile experience is just a little worse.
Squeegee like sibling comments mentioned, then it doesn't take long to dry.
We used moist chalk to leave stronger duster-resistant marks on the board.
That sounds way better
Wait, you don't use water?! As a German I kind of thought that's normal everywhere, dip the sponge into water, clean the blackboard. Slamming dusty sponges together sounds.. very dusty indeed.
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