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.

âÂÂI canâÂÂt image going back to the other way,â said Paula Meyers, a fourth-grade teacher at Kennedy School who has worked the past two years with a whiteboard.

ItâÂÂs 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. LawrenceâÂÂs cost about $1,500 each, but that didnâÂÂt 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, Meyersâ 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 weekâÂÂs vocabulary list.

Kristen Taylor, 12, said she didnâÂÂt imagine a few years ago that she routinely would do work at school with this kind of equipment.

âÂÂYou can write on your own computer and have it up on the screen,â the sixth-grader said.

âÂÂI donâÂÂt want to oversell it,â Pearson said, âÂÂbut if you donâÂÂt have one in your classroom, youâÂÂre fast becoming obsolete.âÂÂ

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 couldnâÂÂt do.

âÂÂThe chalkboard is one-dimensional,â Pearson said.

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

âÂÂIt teaches them skills theyâÂÂll need,â she said.