blackboard invented

by Katheryn Hickle PhD 6 min read

James Pillans

What is the origin of the term blackboard?

Although the term blackboard did not appear until 1815, the use of these cobbled-together slates spread quickly; by 1809, every public school in Philadelphia …

Who invented the black chalkboard?

1801- The blackboard is invented - James Pillans invented the chalkboard and colored chalk in Scotland, which he used to teach geography. Mr. Mr. George Baron, an instructor at West Point Military Academy, is considered the first American instructor to incorporate the use of a large black chalkboard into the presentation of his math lessons in 1801 (unknown, 2012).

How did the invention of the blackboard affect the classroom?

Oct 28, 2012 · It was Josiah F. Bumstead who first declared in his 1841 essay, The Blackboard in the Primary Schools, that the chalkboard is a groundbreaking technological invention (Krause, 2000). Numerous scholars have agreed with Bumstead’s pronouncement citing in reference to the chalkboard that “the inventor or introducer of the system deserves to be ranked among the …

What is Blackboard Analytics and how does it work?

Chandigarh University re-invented their approach to laboratory courses during the pandemic by using Blackboard Collaborate and a remote Lab facility. They developed the only lab of its kind in India, IoT Lab, with 100 setups used for 10 hours a day for 100 days where students accessed the lab from their homes enabled by Blackboard.

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When did blackboard come out?

January 21, 1997Blackboard LearnDeveloper(s)Blackboard Inc.Initial releaseJanuary 21, 1997 (as Blackboard Learning Management System)Stable releaseOctober 2014Websitewww.blackboard.com/teaching-learning/learning-management/blackboard-learn2 more rows

Who invented blackboard and chalk?

teacher James PillansThe Invention of the Chalkboard The chalkboard is widely believed to have been invented by a Scottish teacher James Pillans, in the nineteenth-century (About Blackboards, para. 7).Oct 28, 2012

Who invented blackboard app?

The software consists of seven platforms called Learn, Transact, Engage, Connect, Mobile, Collaborate and Analytics, which are offered as bundled software....Blackboard Inc.TypePrivately heldFoundedJanuary 1997 Washington, D.C., U.S.FoundersStephen Gilfus Daniel Cane Michael Chasen Matthew PittinskyHeadquartersReston, VA , U.S.10 more rows

When was the word blackboard first used?

Etymology and history The term "blackboard" is attested in English from the mid-18th century; the Oxford English Dictionary provides a citation from 1739, to write "with Chalk on a black-Board".

Who invented whiteboard?

Some say it was Martin Heit, a photographer who came up with the idea when he noticed that ink on the back of his film negatives could be easily wiped away. Others maintain that Albert Stallion, who worked for a major steel manufacturer in the UK, invented the whiteboard.Jun 12, 2019

Why is blackboard now called chalkboard?

While black was long the traditional color for blackboards, a green porcelain surface, first used around 1930, cut down on glare, and as this green surface became more common, the word chalkboard came into use.Oct 15, 2014

Is Blackboard still used?

If you're still wondering whether are chalkboards still used in schools or not, your answer is yes, they are. While interactive whiteboards and regular whiteboards continue to take over many new classrooms, it's also easy to see why so many educators are reluctant to give up their chalkboards.

Why is Blackboard color green?

The color change came in the 1960s, when companies sold steel plates coated with green porcelain-based enamel instead of the traditional dark slate. The new material was lighter and less fragile than the first blackboards, so they were cheaper to ship and more likely to survive the journey.Nov 24, 2017

What schools use Blackboard?

Partners include The George Washington University, George Mason University, Georgetown University, Ivy Tech Community College, Kent State University and Wichita State University.Jan 27, 2017

What is a blackboard?

Uses. Reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made. A blackboard (also known as a chalkboard) is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulfate or calcium carbonate, known, when used for this purpose, as chalk.

What are the advantages of blackboards?

As compared to whiteboards, blackboards still have a variety of advantages: 1 Chalk requires no special care; whiteboard markers must be capped or else they will dry out. 2 Chalk is an order of magnitude cheaper than whiteboard markers for a comparable amount of writing. 3 It is easier to draw lines of different weights and thicknesses with chalk than with whiteboard markers. 4 Dashed lines can be drawn very quickly using a technique involving the friction of the chalk (or chalk marker) and blackboard. 5 Chalk has a mild smell, whereas whiteboard markers often have a pungent odour. 6 Chalk writing often provides better contrast than whiteboard markers. 7 Chalk can be easily erased; writing which has been left on a whiteboard for a prolonged period may require a solvent to remove. 8 Chalk can be easily removed from most clothing; whiteboard markers often permanently stain fabric, wood (wood frame), etc. 9 Chalk is mostly biodegradable, whereas most plastic recyclers will not take whiteboard markers.

When was chalk invented?

The first attested use of chalk on blackboard in the United States dates to September 21, 1801, in a lecture course in mathematics given by George Baron. James Pillans has been credited with the invention of coloured chalk (1814): he had a recipe with ground chalk, dyes and porridge.

What are chalk sticks made of?

White chalk sticks are made mainly from calcium carbonate derived from mineral chalk rock or limestone, while colored or pastel chalks are made from calcium sulfate in its dihydrate form, CaSO 4 ·2H 2 O, derived from gypsum. Chalk sticks containing calcium carbonate typically contain 40–60% of CaCO 3 ( calcite ).

Is chalk better than whiteboard?

Chalk writing often provides better contrast than whiteboard markers. Chalk can be easily erased; writing which has been left on a whiteboard for a prolonged period may require a solvent to remove. Chalk can be easily removed from most clothing; whiteboard markers often permanently stain fabric, wood (wood frame), etc.

What is a blackboard?

The blackboard is a recent innovation. Erasable slates, a cheap but durable substitute for costly paper and ink, had been in use for centuries. Students could practice reading and writing and math on their slates, in the classroom or at home.

What is a blackboard in education?

Teachers now had a flexible and versatile visual aid, a device that was both textbook and blank page, as well as a laboratory, and most importantly, a point of focus. The blackboard illustrates and is illustrated. Students no longer simply listened to the teacher; they had reason to look up from their desks.

What is chalk made of?

The chalk with which we write on boards isn’t actual chalk but gypsum, the dihydrate form of calcium sulfate. Gypsum is found naturally and can be used straight out of the ground in big chunks, but it can also be pulverized, colored, and then compressed into cylinders.

When was Blackboard Collaborate created?

Blackboard Collaborate was created in July 2010 and is used by K-12 schools and higher education institutions for professional development and distance learning. It is written in Java. The platform is also used by businesses for distance learning and for conferencing same as Kahoot.

What is Blackboard's patent?

The patent established Blackboard's claims to the concept of connecting together web-based tools to create an interconnected university-wide course management system. The firm announced the patent on July 26, 2006, and on the same day it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against rival education software company Desire2Learn Inc. According to news reports, the awarding of the patent and the lawsuit against Desire2Learn led to concerns about patentability in the electronic learning community.

What percentage of colleges use blackboard?

Seventy-five percent of US colleges and universities and more than half of K–12 districts in the United States use its products and services, and 80 percent of the world's top academic institutions reportedly use Blackboard tools, according to Times Higher Education Reputation Ranking.

Where is Blackboard located?

Website. www .blackboard .com. Blackboard Inc. is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Reston, VA. It is known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. The company's CEO is William L. Ballhaus, formerly president and CEO of SRA International, who was also named chairman and president, on January 4, ...

Who is the CEO of Blackboard?

is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Reston, VA. It is known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. The company's CEO is William L. Ballhaus, formerly president and CEO of SRA International, who was also named chairman and president, on January 4, 2016, ...

What is Blackboard Analytics?

The Blackboard Analytics platform is a system for data warehousing and analysis, with applications for educational institutions to analyze student numbers, class scheduling, and financial information.

When did Blackboard merge with CourseInfo?

Blackboard Inc. In 1998, after Cane met Chasen at a conference on adaptive learning, Gilfus and Cane decided to merge CourseInfo LLC. with Chasen and Pittinky's Blackboard LLC. company in order to raise money and scale the business. The combined company became a corporation known as Blackboard Inc. They renamed the CourseInfo platform built by ...

Who invented the chalkboard?

The chalkboard is widely believed to have been invented by a Scottish teacher James Pillans, in the nineteenth-century (About Blackboards, para. 7). Mr. Pillans “supposedly hung his students’ slates together on the wall, making a large ‘slate board’ to write up his geography lessons where the whole class could see them at once” (Wylie, 2012, pp. 259-260). The first documented case of the chalkboard however is found in America in 1801. Mr. George Baron is credited as being the first teacher to make use of a large black chalkboard to assist him with his instruction at West Point Military Academy (About Blackboards, para. 8). Regardless of where it was invented, either in the United Kingdom or in the United States of America, the fact remains that the chalkboard was created by teachers to assist with teaching, and is an important educational technology.

What is the chalkboard called?

A closer look at two teaching manuals published in the late nineteenth century demonstrate that the chalkboard, also called the blackboard , was the “main-stay and sheet anchor of a lesson” (Livesey, 1881, p. 6).

What is the most important technological innovation of all time?

A close look into the history of educational technology will reveal that an invention from over two hundred years ago remains arguably the most influential technological innovation of our time. It was Josiah F. Bumstead who first declared in his 1841 essay, The Blackboard in the Primary Schools, that the chalkboard is a groundbreaking technological invention (Krause, 2000). Numerous scholars have agreed with Bumstead’s pronouncement citing in reference to the chalkboard that “the inventor or introducer of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors of mankind” (Krause, 2000, p.11; Ressler, 2004, p.71; Tyack & Cuban, 1995, p.121). With the advent of compulsory schooling in the United Kingdom in the late eighteen hundreds and the significant increase in student population in public schools, the British acknowledged a sudden need to adopt a unified education program. The chalkboard stood at the core of this new teaching culture. This report will argue that the chalkboard gave rise to the standardization of public education, and its integration into English classrooms in the nineteenth century led to the widespread advancement of rote memorization as the dominant teaching pedagogy in the United Kingdom.

What was the Lancasterian method of education?

The increase in student population that resulted from the 1870 Education Act in Britain created the need to standardize education. Krause (2000) proposes that the British are responsible for the Lancasterian method that was arguably “one of the first ‘systematic’ approaches to education” (p.10). This newly standardized approach was advertised throughout the country via teaching manuals, which were published in mass and as Wylie (2012) contends “promote pedagogy as largely universal” (p.261). The chalkboard, having been deemed a necessity, was aggressively promoted in these teaching manuals that spread the word of this new standardized approach to education. Krause declares “chalkboards … were an essential part of the Lancasterian method because [they] kept costs low by minimizing the use of paper, ink, pens and books, and because [they] facilitated group instruction by monitors and teachers” (p.10). A closer look at two teaching manuals published in the late nineteenth century demonstrate that the chalkboard, also called the blackboard, was the “main-stay and sheet anchor of a lesson” (Livesey, 1881, p. 6). In How to Prepare Notes of Lessons: A Manual for Pupil Teachers and Students in Training Colleges, Taylor praises the chalkboard for its invaluable impact on teaching and learning. Taylor writes that:

What are teaching manuals?

Teaching manuals produced in the late nineteenth century in England outlined in precise detail how a lesson was to be taught. Wylie (2012) concurs that the “instructions portray the teacher as explainer, demonstrator and corrector. There is no active knowledge construction by students, only explanation followed by drill, with the teacher giving corrections” (p.261). The emphasis on rote memorization is demonstrated below in figure 1. In this lesson, Taylor (1881) demonstrates to the teacher the step-by-step process to teach the letters I, T, L and H. He leaves little to the imagination of the classroom teacher.

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Overview

  • At the end of the 18th century, students in Europe and America were still using individual slates made of actual slate or pieces of wood coated with paint and grit and framed with wood. Paper and ink were expensive but slate and wood were plentiful and cheap, making them the economi…
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Etymology and history

Design

Chalk sticks

The writing slate was in use in Indian schools as mentioned in Alberuni's Indica (Tarikh Al-Hind), written in the early 11th century:
They use black tablets for the children in the schools, and write upon them along the long side, not the broadside, writing with a white material from the left to the right.
The first classroom uses of large blackboards are difficult to date, but they were used for music …

Advantages and disadvantages

A blackboard can simply be a board painted with a dark matte paint (usually black, occasionally dark green). Matte black plastic sign material (known as closed-cell PVC foamboard) is also used to create custom chalkboard art. Blackboards on an A-frame are used by restaurants and bars to advertise daily specials.

Gallery

Sticks of processed "chalk" are produced especially for use with blackboards in white and also in various colours. White chalk sticks are made mainly from calcium carbonate derived from mineral chalk rock or limestone, while coloured or pastel chalks are made from calcium sulphate in its dihydrate form, CaSO4·2H2O, derived from gypsum. Chalk sticks containing calcium carbonatetypically …

See also

As compared to whiteboards, blackboards still have a variety of advantages:
• Chalk requires no special care; whiteboard markers must be capped or else they will dry out.
• Chalk is an order of magnitude cheaper than whiteboard markers for a comparable amount of writing.

Further reading

• Magnetic blackboard used for play and learning at the children's museum, Kitchener, Canada, 2011
• Teacher explaining the decimal system of weights using a blackboard, Guinea-Bissau, 1974
• Man writing on a blackboard in Guinea-Bissau in the open air, 1974

Overview

• Blackboard Jungle
• Chalkboard gag from The Simpsons
• Chalkzone
• Conic Sections Rebellion, an 1830 student uprising when Yale students were required to draw their own diagrams on the blackboard

Products and services

• Aldrich Kidwell, Peggy; Ackerberg-Hastings, Amy; Lindsay Roberts, David (2008). "The Blackboard: An Indispensable Necessity". Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 21–34. ISBN 978-0-8018-8814-4 – via Google Books.
• Ansell, Ben W. (2010). From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education. New York City: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107616998. OCLC 876849496.

History

Blackboard Inc. is an American educational technology company with corporate headquarters in Reston, VA. It is known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system.
The company's CEO is William L. Ballhaus, formerly president and CEO of SRA International, who was also named chairman and president, on January 4, 201…

Mergers and acquisitions

The initial product to be offered by the company was its course management software, first available in 1998. The latest version, Blackboard Learn 9.1, was released in April 2010. This is a learning management system that provides a learning system for course delivery and management for institutions; a community and portal system for communication; a content management syst…

Operations

CourseInfo was founded in late 1996 as a software provider founded by Cornell University students Stephen Gilfus and Daniel Cane. Gilfus wrote the business plan for CourseInfo and its Interactive Learning Network product while an undergraduate at Cornell. CourseInfo (a dorm room start up) with Gilfus as the business lead and Cane as the lead developer had developed an innovative new platform for internet and networked learning called a "Course Management System" by Gilfus. Gi…

Legal matters

Blackboard has used the acquisition of other companies as a strategy to both limit competitors and enter new markets. Between 2006 and 2012, the company spent more than $500 million on acquisitions.
Competing learning management platforms that were acquired by Blackboard in order to absorb their users and reduce competition include: George Washington University'scourse management …

See also

Though previously a public company, following its 2011 buyout by Providence Equity Partners Blackboard now operates as a private company. The company's headquarters are in Washington, D.C. and it has offices in Asia, Australia, Europe and in several locations in North America.