I’ve done a similar experiment with students using ‘unfamiliar’ objects. The purpose of that task is to identify the function of the object through what Dennett calls artefact hermeneutics; in the class, a kind of amateur archaeology. I’d be happy to explain it as part of your session if you like.

Thank you for your comments. I was also thinking of Christian Greiffenhagen, who visited Tembusu earlier this year. His ethnography of doctoral students in mathematics showed the prominence of the blackboard which student and supervisor were always reaching for and returning to. See here, e.g.

www.academia.edu/1769704/The_materiality_of_mathematics_presenting_mathematics_at_the_blackboard

In a kind of nominal skeumorphism some of us use the Blackboard app more often than the physical thing. How do students today, who might have only seen them in photographs, think about blackboards and their value?

Your questions are very helpful in thinking about how we could discuss this value in constrast to whiteboards. I’d be keen to include that discussion.

Like you, I am keen to reflect on the materiality of the classroom and of teaching. The picture above reminds me of a chapter by Michael Barany and Donald MacKenzie on chalk, blackboards and other low-tech materials in the production of ideas for mathematics research. (mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262525381.001.0001/upso-9780262525381-chapter-6) – if anyone wants a pdf copy of it I can easily send it to you.

The blackboard’s pedagogical history dates back to the turn of the 19th century. In Barany and MacKenzie’s ethnographic study on mathematical research practices, blackboards in use are described as “big and available”, “slow and loud” as well as “ostentatious” (p.114). These “topical surfaces of potential inscription,” they write, “presage the seminar’s rhythm, its steady alternation of marking, talking, moving, and erasing.” (p.113-4)

Evocative for thinking about the whiteboards that line the walls of many ‘modern’ classrooms?

I could imagine a discussion about classroom whiteboards and the way we enact teaching and learning through their use. E.g. who has access to the board(s) and when, how are tables and chairs positioned relative to the board(s), etc. What are ‘standard’ practices invited or assumed by the setup? What alternatives might we think of?

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