Here's a photo of a class in my old Catholic grammar school. From around 1964. Someone installed B&W TV sets in each classroom so we could watch something the teacher selected from our local educational TV channel (in the NYC area it was channel 13). Notice that the TV set is sitting in the back of the classroom. The teachers never used the TVs. They spent most of the time drilling the kids on arithemetic and grammar so we'd score well on the annual achevement tests. If it didn't show on the test, it wasn't taught.
That blackboard pointer saw more use hitting kids than pointing out stuff on the blackboard.
