Erase those memories of dusty black chalkboards that have been the mainstay of school classrooms for more than a century.

Plug into the future: interactive, digital whiteboards linked to computers. They are already in limited use at Lawrence schools and are expected to make chalkboards soon obsolete.

The devices allow students to write and erase with an inkless marker or a fingertip, download and display information off the Internet, play movies or music, and deliver PowerPoint presentations.

“I can’t image going back to the other way,” said Paula Meyers, a fourth-grade teacher at Kennedy School who has worked the past two years with a whiteboard.

It’s a sign of the times that the whiteboards now outsell traditional chalkboards in the United States. The equipment initially was designed for business boardrooms rather than school classrooms.

The units cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to $20,000 each. Lawrence’s cost about $1,500 each, but that didn’t include computers linked to the whiteboards.

The most advanced whiteboards in the district are in computer laboratory classrooms at Kennedy and East Heights schools.

On a recent school day, Meyers’ students used a SMART Board marketed by a company in Alberta, Canada, to develop parts of a fictional story. They stood at the board and took turns filling in blanks with the names of characters, personal attributes and plot details.

Down the hall at Kennedy, sixth-grade teacher Mitch Pearson had his students practice on a whiteboard for a spelling test. Students wrote each word – correcting as necessary – from the week’s vocabulary list.

Kennedy School sixth-grader Tandy Myers navigates the Web by touching a high-tech whiteboard screen during class. The new boards, which are replacing traditional chalkboards in classrooms, can be used in all the same ways a desktop computer is used. One of the advantages the new boards have over chalkboards is the ability to use computer-based learning tools and programs during classroom activities, all of which the students can view and download to their own desktop computers.

Kristen Taylor, 12, said she didn’t imagine a few years ago that she routinely would do work at school with this kind of equipment.

“You can write on your own computer and have it up on the screen,” the sixth-grader said.

“I don’t want to oversell it,” Pearson said, “but if you don’t have one in your classroom, you’re fast becoming obsolete.”

He said students studying ocean ecosystems recently pulled up information on an oil spill caused by the sinking of a tanker off the coast of Spain. Those images engaged his students in a way that sketches in chalk on a black slate simply couldn’t do.

“The chalkboard is one-dimensional,” Pearson said.

Kennedy Principal Clim Clayburn said the whiteboards had exposed all the school’s students to sophisticated computer skills. Children of all ages rotate through the high-tech classrooms.

“It teaches them skills they’ll need,” she said.