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Kyle Brown wrote: Jimlongley, most of the technical difficulties I have witnessed fall into two categories. Either the operator cannot connect the hardware properly or the operator cannot “advance� at will to the next slide/video clip. Often, these “technical� moments turn humorous. One day, two officers from Dyess AFB were presenting the finer points of the B1 Bomber to a local civic organization. The presentation was wrought with “gliches.� Finally, one of the officers commented that it was far easier to fly the B1 than to use his laptop to make the presentation.

I appreciate your responses. I'm going to try PowerPoint.

We were being given a presentation by someone who obviiously had no experience with Power Point, and she kept double clicking to move to the next slide, which of course, advanced two. I don't think she ever figured it out, and since I had tried to help her earlier in the class, with limited success and with a reaction from her that implied that since she was the instructor and I was the student I couldn't possibly know better.
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A few years ago I was partnering teaching a class to Bell Atlantic in Virginia, and my partner was somewhat vertically challenged. The room that BA gave us to teach in had two big monitors at the front of the room that we could display our slides on. This was actually kind of neat because we were able to display slides on one screen and, using the equipment we were teaching about, put examples on the other, adding a great deal to the course.

These monitors were suspended form the ceiling in the two front corners of the room, which was also convenient, but neither our host nor any of the people responsible for the room could tell us how to hook up the monitors to our laptops and equipment. Being a long time techie I took a look at the back of the monitors and made up a shopping list and off we went to the local Radio Crap and CompUSA.

CompUSA told us they didn't have one of the things I was asking for, but I was pretty sure they would have it, so I looked around and found exactly what I had asked for, and then badgered them into giving us a discount because they obviously didn't know their stock or what they were talking about.

I found it quite convenient to teach with these monitors, I am tall enough that when I wanted to point at things on the screen I could reach the examply without a problem, but my partner could not. Ever undaunted, my partner got out his pointer and used it to point at the screen. Since I had been using my finger, I knew the static buildup on the screens was pretty high in this air conditioned and very dry building, but using my fingers I had been able to slowly discharge the static as I placed my hand near the screen. My partner swung his metal pointer at the screen before I had a chance to warn him (and as a technical instructor you would think he would know better) he drew an arc off the screen that was absolutely amazing. His reaction was very gratifying and I used it as an intro to my "Controlling Static Discharge" lesson.

I guess I could be considered a former "power user" of Power Point. I used to teach technical courses and used PP very intensively. I included animation, sound, video, and anything else I could shoehorn in to my presentations to make them more effective.

I like and enjoy PP and never have had a technical issue that related directly to the software.

That said, it has been a couple of years since I used it much.

I did have one outstanding technical issue during a PP presentation once. I was teaching the eighth session of a short course in less than a month, so I had the subject matter and accompanying speech pretty deeply ingrained. I was teaching on site and the company had provided me with an almost impossibly small room into which to stuff me, my laptop, my projector, and eight students. And then twelve showed up for the class (a whole 'noter issue.)

About mid morning as I rattled on, keeping the course a little ahead of schedule so we could all go home early, me from Long Island to CHicago even, by getting out a little ofter noon, when one of my students raised his hand and asked if they should be seeing something on the screen.

Since the room was so small I was teaching with my laptop perched on a bookcase at the side of the room and the projector was behind me playing on the screen behind me, so that my students could see on the screen what I was seeing on the laptop. I was not paying attention to what was on the screen or the laptop anyway, I had done the course so much that a quick glance at the laptop to confirm that the slide had changed and I was off and running with my narrative.

The bulb had burned out on the projector and I had been teaching in front of a black screen for several minutes before anyone thought to question whether they should be seeing something.

Of course the books included the slides and notes to go with them, so if they turned their pages they were not missing anything.

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I also used to use PP to make my transparencies.

I used CAD software to draw my really intensive graphics, and then ported the drawings into PP, and used Word for the text of the notes portions, and imported that too.

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I wish I could get back into technical training...