The Technophobe Seeks Common Denominators

Abstract

podium that you can access only if you know the secret code that is dispensed and changed frequently by the media center. Inside the unit are not one but two computers-one a Windows PC, the other a Mac-both with direct hookups to the Internet, both loaded with for shows. There is a video tape player and a video disk player; there is a desktop TV camera called an Elmo that functions as an overhead/opaque projector with a zoom lens that lets you range from macro closeups of something small, say a comma or period, to full-page magazine covers or even three dimensional objects. There's also a carousel slide projector unit in the podium, and the images from all these sources can be sent to a video projector suspended from the ceiling and thence to a screen, which can be raised and lowered automatically from a touch pad on the console, where one can also dim the lights. equipment in each room is worth about $35,000, and it works like a charm-some of the time. Unfortunately, software and hardware changes have made most of the computers just slightly out of date, so the odds are only about fifty-fifty that the laptop presentation you prepared so painstakingly prior to class will actually run, and about fifty-fifty that if it runs, it will look the same on the podium computer as it did on yours at the office. If, to be safe, you bring in your own laptop, the odds are slightly less than fifty-fifty that the input socket on the computers will match with the output cable for your computer, if you remembered to bring your own cable in the first place. The projection techology is pretty good for any print material eighteen points or larger, but one finds oneself frequently using the phrase, This doesn't show up too clearly, but if you could see it, you'd know that it says .. . For reasons not altogether clear to anyone, the system periodically projects menu messages on the screen, right in the middle of whatever it was you were trying to show: External Video Two Ready, Fatal Error: Restart. I am told that these smart classrooms will be lete-the media folks' word for the opposite of obsolete-for no more than two years. In a quiet moment after the students have left, I look out on this smart classroom. Many of the desks are made of brightly colored plastic with graffiti-proof false woodgrain surfaces, but a number of them are ancient wood desks brought over from when the old English building was emptied, the university not having enough money to replace them. The wooden