PANDA THREAD

[Elok]

It has special electronic "markers" whose color you can change by touching the side of the screen and tapping on a palette that comes up. Also you can erase the screen instantly, thereby saving valuable seconds and I guess avoiding the smeary residue issue. That is literally all I have ever seen teachers use them for, and I've only ever seen one who really used the board heavily in that manner. Don't know how much they cost, but I'd be astonished if it's under a thousand dollars. If a school board has to choose between buying six smartboards or hiring an ESL (English as a Second Language) paraeducator, they should go for the latter option, without even thinking about it. But ESL paras don't have a lot of money on their side, so instead of some Latino kid getting something closer to a leveled playing field, teachers get these gilded-turd gadgets.

[Sava]

aside from drawing penises, i don't see any practical use for a smartboard

[Hauldren Collider]

You can draw penises on a blackboard too though.

[Bereta_Eder]

maybe you can press a button and the penises would instantly multiply thus augmenting the smartboards value.

[Sava]

You can draw penises on a blackboard too though.

the wasteful "high tech" nature of the smartboard makes for a better penis

[Elok]

We went over this with Asher, guys. The Smartboard's big dick-drawing advantage is that it can be linked to students' phones, allowing them to draw on the board from anywhere in the classroom. The awesome part was the way Asher spoke of this like it was the future of education and not the most paint-sniffingly idiotic notion possible. Assuming the teacher is both new and dumb enough to enable this feature, a schmuck sitting in the back of the room can draw a little penis on his iPhone and have it appear four feet tall at the front of the room, right in front of the teacher's face or perhaps behind his back. This, my friends, is progress.

[kentonio]

That wasn't what he said, he started explaining more about the capability for things much more wide reaching than that, and in particular said that the most productive use of them was not for a teacher to just stand up and present to the class on them. You all obviously just mocked the idea and did the typical Poly thing of shouting down someone who is actually extremely knowledgable in a subject by all standing around him in a circle chanting 'pants on fire!' at him.

Not that Asher needs anyone to defend him, but it confuses me how anyone could read that thread and not come out the other side thinking you made yourselves look like ignorant children.

[Sava]

because smartboards are stupid

did you even read the thread?

[kentonio]

Yup.

[regexcellent]

They're really ****ing annoying cause you get in the way of the projector. This has probably already been mentioned but I didn't read the thread.

[Sava]

Yup.

but because asher was working on such a product and had some expertise about it... that makes it... not terrible?

are you ****ing stupid?

[kentonio]

Asher was trying to explain why the product was more than certain people thought it was, and mentioned studies that show its effectiveness in the classroom. The non-douche response to that would have been to ask to be linked to those studies or produce others that countered them. None of that happened, we just got a few rounds of 'All the teachers I've ever seen have hated them/been woefully bad with them, therefore they suck! What's wrong with chalk and bits of string anyway!! Waaah!'.

Anyway, I don't have a dog in this fight, it just struck me as particularly douchy.

[Nikolai]

Ah so basically all the bores followed. That sounds like a good thing. I don't trust someone who can't appreciate Asher.

I remained AND signed up for WPC. Win-win.

[Sava]

I remained AND signed up for WPC. Win-win.

You're half right.

[ZEE]

I want to talk some moar aBout Dale, you guise.