Plenty has changed in the classroom over the last several decades.
When I was a student, a tablet was a pad of writing paper. For today's school-age individuals, however, the word "tablet" means something entirely different.
Ah, plenty has changed in the classroom over the last several decades. Okay, it's not as though a classroom would be an unrecognizable place for those of us who attended school in the '60s and '70s, but there is no denying that much has been lost to history.
I offer just a handful of examples for your consumption:
* Internet videos have replaced film strips and movie presentations of yesteryear.
MORE: Vintage photos around New Jersey
* The end-of-day task of clapping the erasers has all but vanished; chalkboards have been displaced by write-erase whiteboards.
There will be a test on this on Throwback Thursday. * An item that has completely disappeared from the 21st-century classroom is the five-line chalk holder. Barely changing in design from the 1800s to the 1980s, it held five pieces of chalk and allowed a teacher to draw parallel lines on the blackboard for teaching cursive writing.
* The first handheld digital calculators appeared in Japan in 1970, and shortly thereafter became available at reasonably affordable prices in the United States, replacing slide rules and pencil-and-paper calculations for students.
Here's a gallery of classic photos on the subject - there won't be a pop quiz, though. Make sure captions are enabled to read all about these vintage photos.
Can't get enough? Here's a link to last year's gallery.
Greg Hatala may be reached at ghatala@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregHatala. Find The Star-Ledger on Facebook.