22 | OPINION


EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY


Classroom Evolution


Hilary Moriarty has seen laptops and on-line marking replace chalk and red ink, but are these technological advances necessarily changes for the beter?


historical context – simple references to which were then happily clocking up marks at A level – just before classes rose up to complain about my fountain pen, real red ink from a botle, my chalk and my trusty board duster. I exaggerate, but only slightly – I was treating the white board as if it were a blackboard, and once, memorably, wrote on one with indelible ink and was sent to the Naughty Corner by the lab technician who had the magic potion to remove it. There was really no mistaking the fact that I had not quite kept up with the times, which were visibly, audibly and inexorably a-changing. My only protection – if not defence – was that I was the head, and who would challenge me? Yes, the lab technician, who was caustic.


W


hen they dig up the bones of the dinosaur teachers, mine will be among them. I left the classroom in 2006, clutching my batered copy of The Duchess of Malfi, still screaming that the words were more important than the blasted


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