Thing 6: Bring Your Own (Tool)

Blog Thing 6

1. What is your BYO curriculum design Thing that you choose to share with us?  White chalk on blackboard is my main teaching tool, aside from printed handouts possibly placed on cam-tools.  Exceptionally, I rely on projectors for images directly related to texts under examination.
   Describe what sort of Thing it is (tool, resource, guide, system etc), what it aims to do and how it's being used.   The white chalk is used at its best in order to illustrate thematic or conceptual relations, or more generally to create a visual "poetic" platform for students' reflection.    
2. How did you find out about this (via a colleague, through training session...)? N/A
3. Why is it particularly useful for you? What aspects are less useful (for you)? The simplicity of the tool contributes to a positive education/distraction ratio.  Keeping tools at a bare minimum has its often underestimated advantages.  Even projectors can become more distracting than illuminating, especially to the extent that the image they introduce appears ex machina, rather than being formed "live" (out of the blackboard's surface).  (N.B. Alas, many classrooms now have whiteboards that have a decisively negative effect on the mystique that drawings on blackboard are capable of possessing.)
4. In what way do you see it being useful for other course designers? My BYO tool invites close coordination of image and speech whereby the former serves as "frontispiece" for the articulation of the other.
5. Add a link / image / upload a version so it's clear what the Thing is and other participants can try it out as well. The image pasted above originally served as frontispiece to a XVIII book that students might examine for a course.  In this case a projector would be used to present the image, although an analogue (or parts thereof) could be drawn on the blackboard.