It’s a bit old-fashioned, but actually so practical: a blackboard, some chalk and an eraser! You literally chalk everything up on the (usually black) background and you remove what has become superfluous. Extremely durable, because it can be used again and again. Now also for the PC!
Start by opening this link: www.tiny.cc/chalk. The web page offers you a download that contains a zip file. Run the exe file and the program is ready to use.
Immediately afterwards you can use Chalkboard for Windows start, to immediately see that it is a minimal tool that will thrive with a drawing tablet and with the tablet PC. And if you’re thinking of using it in the classroom, you’ll have to shoot the computer screen (with Chalkboard for Windows on it) to the big TV screen, creating a cheap digital whiteboard. The latter is easy to achieve, for example, with the help of a Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter, but that aside…
Little for a lot
As you can see, Chalkboard for Windows has few features that you can apparently do a lot with. You just need to know how it works… We start at the bottom left of the screen and then we work to the right and then up:
There are seven colors of chalk: white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Clicking on it means choosing the desired color. Then there is the wiper. You can delete anything that isn’t right. And this digital wiper leaves no streaks. You can choose from three chalk thicknesses: thin, normal and thick. It just depends on how subtle you want to place it on the board. There is also a function to donate. If you are satisfied with Chalkboard for Windows, you can give money via PayPal.
You can save the current board using the diskette icon. A thumbnail view will then appear on the right of the screen. The empty screen icon – as expected – completely cleans the current board. The information icon tells you a bit more about the program and its creator. The first (single) map icon is to discard the current board (if you saved and selected it)–. Use the second (duplicate) map icon to delete all saved boards.
Multiple boards
Now it gets a bit more complicated, because you can work with multiple boards that you can also save and retrieve separately. That starts at the top right of the screen with five background colors: white, gray, dark blue, dark red and dark green. Click on any background color and start drawing on the board. If you then click on a different background color, you can edit a new board. But since you didn’t save the previous board, that previous board will be automatically discarded!
Use the diskette button to save a board in the meantime. And here it is: the five background colors also served as five separate sections! So you can save multiple boards per section. In order to be able to prepare a complete lesson (?). In short, the blackboard has been reinvented!
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