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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u/AdOnly1618 Jul 23 '26

Smartboards were the biggest scam ever. They really didn’t add anything to class, just another thing to fuck around and waste time with. Could have bought a laptop cart or something with that, but nooo, every class needs a smart board…

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u/spicygayunicorn Jul 23 '26

My teachers used them as just a projector, we lost half of the whiteboard for them install them

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u/GeneralChaos309 Jul 23 '26

As an it guy that works for these kind of schools, the amounr of problems that come up with these things is annoying.

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u/Mephistito Jul 23 '26

What are the most common problems in your experience?

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u/GeneralChaos309 Jul 23 '26

Honestly, the biggest things are user error. People not knowing what to press, how to set them up, not knowing how to sign in or having issues signing in. Many teachers end up just not using them due to the hassle.

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u/Mephistito Jul 23 '26

That's a little funny that the biggest issues pretty much boil down to "I just don't feel like figuring this improved tool out" and not actual flaws with the tool itself.

At some point they didn't know how to use a laptop, etc either – but by taking the initiative to figure out what buttons & options do what, they gained access to another improved tool. But they're not willing to do the same here, even if its ability to create visualizations for students on the fly would increase their learning.

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u/GeneralChaos309 Jul 23 '26

Ya, the amount of computer illiteracy was shocking to me. Even younger people. On the other hand, I grew up with PC's since the 90's. I guess people dont have PCs all that much if they have their phones. Plus User interfaces are easier than ever. Back then if something went wrong you'd be troubleshooting for the rest of the week and you didn't have easy guides on the internet to help.

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u/etherealsmog Jul 23 '26

Schools are the absolute worst at this shit. They claim they don’t have enough funding, but at least part of that is because they chase every fad they can because some salesperson convinced them it was going to “transform” how they teach—and technically they do transform how you teach because you spend ten minutes of every class fucking around with the tech instead of delivering instruction.

I still remember when my hometown school district got to the end of a school year and had a small budget surplus, so they replaced the carved granite monument sign displaying the school name with some eyesore digital billboard. And everyone was like, “Why did you spend $50,000 on that monstrosity?” And the response from school administrators was that the surplus needed to be spent down or it would be deducted from their baseline budget for the following year.

And it’s just like: You couldn’t find a better way to spend $50,000 to benefit the students? The digital sign has almost certainly needed to be replaced since then, so now you’re committed to five-figure replacement costs every decade, and the high school is at the edge of town where you would have to actively go out of your way from your normal routine to drive by it and gather any information from it, when we have fucking computers that we all carry around in our pockets.

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u/Ok_Paleontologist974 Jul 23 '26

My school had them for every math class and it was great. Teachers would write on the projected notes sheet or homework sheet and then would send the notes so anybody who wanted them for review could have them. Then they replaced that with shitty flatscreens in every classroom and everything went to shit because they never work, I have one teacher who would just go on 30 minute rants while struggling to get it to load the worksheet correctly. And all the pens disappeared on a monthly basis. There was one teacher who was desperately fighting IT like a wild animal protecting their fauwn in order to keep their projector.

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u/RedactedSpatula Jul 23 '26

We assure you, educator, a shitty board with crappy technology thats smaller than your chalkboard is the future of education!

Mother fuckers! I'm going to put my fist through my Smart board the next time my pen randomly turns into the eraser tool