Projecting

I thought of another reason that I am more comfortable with the data projector now. It's not to say that I use it every day, by the way, but that it's less cumbersome when I need it.

My classroom is part of what used to be a convent, and not a standard size and shape. My students' desks are only a few feet from the front wall, so the projector, in order to be far enough away from the screen, must be in the midst of the desks. Awkward for presenting. I have not complained about this to anyone, because I don't want anyone to tell me that I should use a different classroom, or heaven forbid, travel to various available ones throughout the day. I like my classroom for various reasons, not the least of which is the view.

Then along came the e-mail from one of our media center folks last year (thanks, Larry D.!) asking if we wanted a long cable to connect the computer to the projector. Yes! Now I can stand at the front and look at my students while I am projecting (and so can students), and it makes a very big difference.

Parent Night

This is the first time I have used the data projector for Parent Night. It's only ten minutes per class and in the past I have filled it with talking (sometimes a little too fast). And it seemed to me that even if I wanted to use the projector, fumbling with it would take up too much of the time.

So what was different this year? I'm more comfortable with these machines, even to a certain extent with the one I have now which is new and not what I'm used to. (This reminds me of how it took me a while to get the hang of setting up those 16mm films in the projector when I started teaching!)

The other different thing was that I had a couple of things I wanted parents to see and the projector was the best way. In Justice and Peace, instead of just talking about the wiki and the blog, why not show them? The downside was that it made it seem as though those two tools dominate the course more than they do. One parent at the end seemed to need reassurance that we actually use the textbook. It would perhaps dismay some who are on the cutting edge of educational trends, but... yes, we do.