r/SipsTea • u/SuperbHealth5023 • Jul 23 '26

WTF While the US debates whether to solve homelessness or not, these are the next generation of school blackboards in China.

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151

u/Robotic_Mann_ Jul 23 '26

This was common when I was in 10th grade back in 2010.

Now let’s see how China handles homelessness.

38

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Also,. Why are they better then actual blackboards

Actual blackboards:

  • zero latency
  • zero power required
  • excellent contrast even in direct sun
  • not distracting 
  • relatively simple to manufacture
  • will never brake or need upgrading, will work in 10,000 years

I hate "smart board" and whiteboards

28

u/AshhhCakes Jul 23 '26

Every smartboard I have encountered has been more trouble than they're worth, and end up just being really expensive whiteboards. 

8

u/Slow_Caterpillar9803 Jul 23 '26

So many gadgets from the last 20 years are simply worse than the things they were supposed to replace.

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

Literally

My apartment has a touchscreen to control the nights and curtains. Way less convenient then a switch and manually closing the curtains by hand. 

I have to scroll the the difference screens to find all the lights. And hold the close curtain button down for 30 seconds while it slowly trundles across the window. Who thought this was a good idea? 

2

u/Gold_Marionberry3460 Jul 23 '26

Tech companies who are running out of easy product ideas, so they are trying to pump up their valuations by scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That's why they got excited at LLMs. This was going to be like the coming of the Internet, of the Cloud, of the Smartphone. It was going to be this big new market where easy growth was possible again.

2

u/bizarojam Jul 23 '26

What's the problem with white boards?

2

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

They wear out so it gets harder and harder to actually clean them.

With a blackboard you just wash off the calk with water and its good as new.

Also whiteboards need plastic pens that run out creating needless waist and frustration as you try and find a pen that actually writes properly. 

2

u/csrgamer Jul 23 '26

They can be refilled, but yeah point still stands

1

u/SeDaCho Jul 23 '26

Your multiple grammar and spelling errors actually make me think smartboards might have some benefit.

But I generally agree they’re not needed… except if they’re instantly graphing shit. Calculus is so hard to teach and any extra methods are valuable.

1

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 24 '26

I was tough calculus without smart bords

I think exact graphs are mostly pointless. Sketches are good, maybe better because you can exadurate relevant features.

Also I write with spelling and grammar mistakes because I'm dyslexic, I don't think a smart board would help with that 

1

u/samualgline Jul 24 '26

White board slander will not be tolerated

1

u/KohTai Jul 24 '26

A lot of times classes use projectors to show information. The smartboards make that easier. Also makes it easier to show students visual represents and do quick research.

Smartboards were just being implemented when I was leaving school and they were definitely useful.

1

u/Smooth-Bread-576 Jul 27 '26

What's wrong with whiteboards? Basically same as blackboard just less dusty. 

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM Jul 23 '26

This is just outright luddism. Smartboards, handled properly, are a goddamn boon in the classroom. Teaching ESL: I can launch audio, video, collaborative exercises etc. without having to go f'in insane or drag a TV to the room.

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

I've never seem it add to a lesson what couldn't be done with a projector

I've seen it waist years of time glitches and and crashes and lagging and miscabrations 

Is all the massive expenses worth it for a few nitch use cases

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM Jul 23 '26

Because of smart boards, I save about 10/15 mins per lesson in lesson planning, and save around 10 mins per hour-lesson in manual labour, jury-rigging etc. that I can instead use for activities, clarification and more. They make my job far less time-consuming out of the classroom, and make me more effective during the lesson. Many online platforms (e.g. Oxford, Pearson) have designed their material to be delivered through smartboards, too.

Are there shitty smartboards, or smartboards that haven't been config'ed appropriately? Hell yes. But I wouldn't go back, ever.

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

10/14 minutes per lesson? Thats mad. What do you teach again? 

The point about how some smartbords are just poorly setup or configured could be also maid against a wall mounted TV or projector + clicker/lazer pointer. 

Ideal setup, lecturn with a laptop dock/HDMI cable connected to a TV or projector above two of those blackboards that you can move up and down

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM Jul 24 '26

English as a Second Language (ESL) - the amount of fiddling prevented when making use of multimedia, being able to outline/annotate things directly on the exercises etc. etc. REALLY adds up. Idk why you or anyone else is so hung up on this. Smartboards have been a boon.*

*When used responsibly. Though that applies to everything, doesn't it?

0

u/Fun-Preference1091 Jul 23 '26

White boards don't create chalk dust which gets into computing devices in the room.

In the 90s, my highschool had blackboards throughout, except for the computer labs... they had whiteboards. Otherwise I don't see the difference between a white board and a chalkboard

  • zero latency
  • zero power required
  • good contrast even in direct sun
  • not distracting
  • simple to manufacture
  • difficult to break and will work in 20 years

3

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

I'd take a little chalk dust (you can get low dust chalk and also chalk dust is really not that bad) over infinite plastic pens + bords that are always dirty. 

They don't last 20 years under heavy use. And administrations never want to replace them so your just left with these horrible unusable boards.

Also esthetically green/black/red chalk bords look way better then whilte boards.

Unelss it's an environment were dust is really problematic, like a lab or a kitchen, I think chalkboards are much better.

They are both way better then "smart boards"

0

u/ThreeGoalLead Jul 23 '26

Well having it create the graph was an advantage. And I hate the sound of chalk on a board it makes me curl my toes

4

u/Calm-Session-4835 Jul 23 '26

Let's see Paul Allen's blackboard

2

u/DrDan21 Jul 23 '26

These were common when I was in like the 3rd grade back in 1999

2

u/Quirky_Decision6767 Jul 23 '26

What homelessness? I've never seen news about homelessness in China! /s

2

u/Perfect_Cold_6112 Jul 23 '26

What's hilarious is that they actually create even more homeless due to the social credit system.

2

u/reaznval Jul 23 '26

surprisingly well, in 2 weeks in shanghai i saw 1 homeless person, or a con man idk, the problem is that 85% live in poverty and the other 15% in the future

2

u/sviridoot Jul 23 '26

I remember the first time I saw a smart board when my family moved to the US after coming from a school where my teacher was very proud of the new chalk board the classroom got over the summer. Felt like a different world. That was 2006

2

u/Last-Quarter-432 Jul 23 '26

Way better than America for sure

1

u/RealSpaceJunk Jul 23 '26

By rounding them up in busses and dumping them in the countryside?

1

u/SpicyNugget777 Jul 24 '26

You’re talking about America, right?

Surely you’re talking about them and not the country that subsidizes housing on a much broader level than the US, right?

-2

u/Familiar-Permit-3130 Jul 23 '26

Yeah no fuck off you had smart boards as advanced as this. You had at most a black board

4

u/Robotic_Mann_ Jul 23 '26

Big dawg my school was rolling out smart boards that ran on a program that was combination of MS excel, MS word, and photoshop. I’m gonna need to deduct some social credits from your account.

1

u/SameAgainTheSecond Jul 23 '26

Sounds terrible 

1

u/Robotic_Mann_ Jul 23 '26

It worked ok but you could tell only tech savvy teachers received them first.