This one’s been in here before, yes. In 2009, I believe. But I want to ask a different question:

What was the cutting edge technology when you were in the classroom?

When I started my undergraduate career (at Monmouth College), it was in a 90-year old building, the furniture seeming like it was just as old. One classroom had an overhead projector. There was a computer in an office we could use, but we didn’t have the world wide web quite yet. Enterprising students could log in to a sunsite and get a text version. Five years later, there were laptops built into podiums, new furniture, new walls, new windows… I barely recognized the place. More productive, yes. But I liked it better the old way.

When I started teaching on the college level—about fifteen years ago—we had just gotten smartboards. If you’ve never seen one of these, they’re pretty cool, with a board and projector working together to display everything from digital dry-erase markers to surfing the web with your fingers. Heck, I still think they’re cool.

Now? That’s a good question. The devices seem to have gone out to individuals. I’m going to do a piece on this and the innovative awesomeness coming out of Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning, but in the interim, it may surprise you to know I encourage my students to use their devices in class. Are they sometimes going to be distracted and do other things? Sure. But people have long doodled and daydreamed, too. With devices, it just means they can no longer answer a question by saying they don’t know. For me, that’s the big advantage we have now: just about every answer at our fingertips.

On this photo here, from Bruce McMillan: The people in the photo, left to right, are Prof. Kenneth McMillin, Prof. Howard Anderson, and Prof. G. Cleaves Byers (note the spelling and name corrections). The computer is a Heathkit Analog Computer (note the vacuum tubes on the top row as part of the amplifiers). This picture is mostly likely taken in Hubbell Hall and was taken in summer 1956.