2012-03-07
Going Commando
Yay, got my Commando-brand chalk holder with anodized aluminum barrel/handle in the mail. Hopefully this keeps me from shattering the chalk in my clenched fist every day from my math rage-outs. If this doesn't work, then I'll need to step up to some kind of military-grade titanium or somesuch...
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Delta, where do you teach that you still use chalk? I love the feel you get when writing with chalk - so much more tactile that a whiteboard marker. I don't miss the dust in my pores though - this cool holder might help with that.
ReplyDeleteI teach at Kingsborough Community College, part of CUNY in NYC. Maybe about half the boards in classrooms have been replaced with whiteboards, but the primary math classrooms still use chalk.
ReplyDeleteI must say (having used both... and a prior school that was all-whiteboard) that I prefer chalk for my teaching. A large part of it is the logistics over acquiring new markers, which run out much faster than a box of chalk. I find that a marker runs out for me in just 1 or 2 class sessions. (Some say that I write more than other instructors, but I don't see any other way to demonstrate the discipline.) Plus in practice I have to buy markers myself, whereas a box of chalk I can get from the school (with some effort).
I often think of what an environmental/cost-benefit study of markers vs. chalk would look like. I've already found that the chalk holder does keep me a little cleaner, and also extends chalk duration by about x4. (The savings if you gave every instructor one of these would be pretty solid, I think.)