My Year 12 students, who are studying Economics within the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, are usually in my classroom at the St Kilda Road Campus but recently they have been attending virtual classes with a little bit of a difference. I’m delivering the Economics course from my very own dedicated ‘TV studio’ – aka my garage. With my students scattered across Melbourne and home being about an hour northwest of Melbourne, my priority was to provide some degree of normality, creating a learning experience as close to face-to-face learning as I could, by livestreaming.
Teaching and learning by livestream involves a little bit of tech wizardry, but at the heart of my approach is some good old chalkboard technology.
My chalkboard is enabling us to collaborate and discuss as a class – and I’m able to annotate on the chalkboard, which not only helps to guide our analyses and explanations but also assists students in their note taking. In essence, the chalkboard enables us to focus on what’s important and provides the students with guidance and structure in terms of the fundamentals of the course.
I enlisted the help of my builder father-in-law during the term break and bought a piece of MDF and can of blackboard paint. We gave the MDF two coats then conditioned the surface, and the chalkboard in my TV studio-cum-garage was ready to go.
I mainly use the chalkboard for working through examples with diagrams and the concepts associated with them. The example in the image explains that while the aggregated factors influencing the supply of unicorns (‘sunshine’) are ultimately magic, economic analysis suggests they are influenced by current increased demand as a consequence of social isolation, moderated by current fiscal policy actions of government to maintain or stimulate supply.
If it seems a little different to my Year 12 students – who may never have seen a chalkboard at school! – they might note that regardless of the technology we use to deliver it, productive learning remains the same. And in our current situation, many good things are still happening.
Sam Allen is a Head of House and VCE and IB DP Economics Teacher at Wesley’s St Kilda Road Campus.