An Old Instructional Technology

An early instructional Wiki?

While in Florence to meet with the RTC Italy, we visited one of their facilities at the old Osservatorio Ximeniano, in the city center. In addition to the old telescope, they have a museum of many historic scientific instruments, including meteorological ones. They also they have a classroom that contains this very old desk designed for teaching.

Note that it hosts a rounded side and bench for students to sit around, and a straight side for the teacher. In the center is embedded a large piece of slate for writing with chalk. In this way, it could be used for collaborative writing and problem solving with the teacher. Of course, it was probably used mostly for the teacher to write out problems, equations, diagrams, or text (upside down?), but if students contributed their ideas and answers, as suggested by having the slate set within the desk surface within the reach of all, these would be for all to see, as in a discussion forum, Wiki or other online collaboration tools. I thought it was worth sharing, to remind us that the past provides many good models of teaching for today also.