Last week brought to an end the industry summary PowerPoint presentations
that we've each been delivering in my Marketing Communications class (BUS 227).
Most students e-mail our professor their presentation file beforehand so that
they can easily present using the classroom's digital projection screen. A
wireless mouse at the speaker podium enables slide advance.
With his laptop hooked into both the projector and the ethernet, Professor
Fly has been able to use technology in the best way I've seen yet here in
Calloway. In-classroom technology has been used most often to play commercials
on demand throughout the semester. During discussions, a student might mention a
commercial that she saw recently. As she explains what she liked and didn't like
about the ad, Fly hops onto www.AdCritic.com and queues the commercial for the
rest of class to watch. Eight by six foot, full screen QuickTime video then
plays (with surround sound) for our class of twenty. It's a dynamic classroom
experience made better by technology, it's awesome, and it's one of the reasons
I came to Wake Forest.
Congratulations for that.
Unfortunately, sharing multi-media for students isn't always that easy, even
if their efforts are premeditated. As I was first typing this, another
presentation was paused to deal with problems after the presenter attempted to
incorporate video into her slideshow. Of the nine presentations that tried to
use video last week, only one worked without considerable problem and classroom
interruption. Why?
- Without our own AdCritic accounts, it's hard to find commercials on-line.
Students must hyperlink to a company's website (if the commercial is
available), or download it elsewhere and include the file directly within
their PowerPoint presentation.
- But then students can't transfer their big file video attachments to the
professor. The files won't fit on a floppy, and usually surpass e-mail
attachment limits. Even though our laptops have CDRW drives, most students
aren't familiar with burning data discs.
- Every student here has a nice ThinkPad, so why not just plug in and
present? CRT and line-out audio work fine, but the professor's Logitech's
USB wireless mouse doesn't seem to get recognized by everyone's laptop.
Never mind Professor Fly repeatedly telling me, "You'll need to install
software to use that mouse." USB was supposed to solve that, wasn't it?
My laptop had the mouse operational within ten seconds of connecting the USB
base; my friend John's ThinkPad never heard it plug in.
Even integrated hyperlinks to web-stored video files violently stab into the
presentational flow. It often takes at least three clicks (and the starting of
two new applications- web browser and video player) before the first frame
begins.
We've got blazingly fast ethernet, dozens of laptops, and at least one DVD
player in the classroom. VHS shouldn't be the best method for student-driven
video display within the classroom. Here are some quick thoughts/solutions to
each problem addressed above.
- I e-mailed the class at the beginning of the semester to suggest the
less-professional but equally extensive adland commercial archive. Their
subscription rates certainly fall into more student budgets than AdCritic.
Otherwise, does Calloway we have a shared AdCritic account that could be
accessed from the library?
- USB thumb-drives would work great for moving files from the dorm room into
the class room. Too expensive to deploy? Each student also has public
network space available, but I'd guess that less than 5% even know how to
use it. Students logging and in and out between presentations to access
their home drives is about as practical as spreading their PPTs over
multiple floppies. Instead, students should drop their video files (or
entire presentations) to their web space on www.wfu.edu But before that gets
adopted, this feature drastically needs to be easier to use. Why do I have
to change permissions through the web each time I upload something to my
WWW_HOME via FTP? That doesn't encourage a lot of access.
- Is it possible that the mouse installation worked seamlessly on my machine
because I'm running a fresh installation of Windows XP, as opposed to
Information System's default load? Also, I've flashed my BIOS at least once. Thanks for the suggestion, Blake!
Thank you for your attention on this. It's great to see our campus technology
initiative paying off- Now let's make sure the "last mile" connections
are functional.
Nick Gray