Hornbook

I recently visited the elementary school that Tall Cool One works at. I was surprised that none of the class rooms have a chalk board.

I asked him, "Where are the chalk boards?"

He looked at me kind of like I had three heads. "Where have you been?" he asked. "They don't teach with chalk boards anymore. Now they teach with a Smart Board."

"A what?" I asked.

"A new technology called "Interactive White Boards".

So I got looking at them and saw these color-coded markers; your basic red, green, blue and yellow. So, me being the hands on kind of person that I am, picked one up and tried to write on the board with it. Nothing happened and I looked at Tall Cool One questionly. "If it's so smart how come I can't write on it?"

He tells me, "It has to be turned on in order for it to work".

"Oh, of course it does", I roll my eyes.

Then he explained that he watched a child grab the letters from the bottom of the screen and move them up on the board and spell out his name.

"Grab the letters and move them up on the screen!" I exclaim. "Huh? That makes no sense to me. How is that child going to learn to write his name?"

Tall Cool One laughs, "Everything is computerized now, no one needs to know how to write."

I know he said it jokingly, but he's so right. What happened to the chalk boards in the world? What happened to the hornbooks? What's next?