Starting point

1. Introduction

I found myself thinking about teachers today. My teachers. It took a moment or two to work out that close to 40 years have gone by since my secondary school years, so it amounted to a memory test.
At first I couldn't get any of it back, but then bits and pieces came back. Some faces, some names and, rarely, names and faces that went together.
The point of the class exercise was to remember the bad teachers and say what made them ineffective but I could only recall the good ones; the teachers who made me laugh, who took took an interest in me, who inspired me.
There must have been some poor teachers at what was a pretty lacklustre school, but my memory seems to have edited them out of the picture. There seems to be some sort of justice in that.
Sharing memories, members of our group talked about experiences and, for me, it evoked the 1970s classroom with the blackboard as its focal point and a dusting of chalk over every surface. Which seemed to link in with the following session - a discussion of the role new technologies can play in the delivery of effective learning.
This blog leads on from that discussion. Would the teachers I can still remember have been that bit more memorable if they had been able to use an interactive whiteboard, a virtual learning environment or Powerpoint?