Blackboard vs PowerPoint: How do you teach your math class

Do you use a Blackboard with chalk, a whiteboard with a marker, or do you use a PowerPoint presentation?

For centuries, educators taught math on a Blackboard. It is the most efficient method to deliver math methods and ideas to your class.

A presentation on a Blackboard is engaging and dynamic. It adapts to what is happening in your class. It is well-paced. It never goes overtime.

A Blackboard presentation can show the most intricate details of a mathematical argument.

A Blackboard presentation shows one simple step at a time. It allows your students to digest the idea and ask questions before going to the next step.

Unfortunately, we often see the Blackboard method replaced by PowerPoint, and it is rarely good.

As a rule, a PowerPoint presentation is often poorly structured and poorly delivered.

It is often overloaded with content and goes over time.

It is always shallow on details and rarely goes beyond a simple list of bullet points.

Due to the multi-page structure of a PowerPoint presentation, a presenter needs to flick back and forth between pages to reference earlier content.

Such structure is incompatible with the essence of mathematical argument and impossible to follow.

PowerPoint has only one advantage over the Blackboard: re-usability! Re-usability is the only reason why PowerPoint is becoming so ubiquitous. Re-usability is convenient. Apart from re-usability, PowerPoint has little value to a math educator.

This project aims to add what is missing in the traditional Blackboard teaching method. It combines all of the advantages of a Blackboard with the one missing element: re-usability.

Give it a try in your next class! Visit our Getting Started course.