[JadeNB]

> Main benefit was in the speed of presentation. Writing on a blackboard takes some time, the lecturer is slow enough in presenting that you can really follow along, while not "standing still".

While I love chalk, and miss it since my current university uses whiteboards (actually stupid @#@#* WallTalkers, despite our pleas), it's hardly the case that the two options are 'chalk' or 'Powerpoint'. Also, Powerpoint slides can be delivered at a reasonable pace—I've seen many professors fruitfully use slides with blanks, distributed to the students in advance, on which students can take notes—and chalk-and-talk lectures are scarcely universal models of pacing—one 'remedy' often pursued by lecturers who want to go faster than they can write is just not to write anything.

[OJFord]

In EE blackboards were mostly replaced shortly before / while I was there a few years ago. Whiteboards are _vastly_ inferior for two reasons in my view:

1. Colours are harder to distinguish, or to see at all. Chalk is easy, even a brand new pen is difficult from more than a few rows back, possibly made worse by my colour blindness;

2. You can't go over an existing pen line. You can _sort of_ make it thicker (but typically remove part of it at the same time) but you can't draw a square and then go over one edge in red, for example.

[baud147258]

In one of the class I had, which used Powerpoint, I had a pdf version of the slides, on which I added notes, all on the corresponding slides.