Saturday, April 3, 2010

2 Projectors

I was emailing Tami Brass (she's got a terrific blog to follow - I find myself retweeting her all the time and using her Diigo bookmarks as a first stop when researching) and was talking about the idea of 2 projectors.

The question is: why is there only 1 projector in a classroom, or even at a conference where there are speakers? Why is the projector fixed in the "front" of the classroom or meeting space and pointing to one wall or screen - meaning that the "owner" of the projector is the owner of the material - and he/she "releases" that position for the students or the audience? (Or sometimes does not ever release that position for others.)

Why not 2 projectors? (Yes, I understand about the cost) But why not have a projector just for the students to use so when they are working together and want to share with the smaller or whole group, it's easy to do? Why not a projector for the audience members when there is work to be done so that groups can also share together or for a larger group? Or even then both the students and the audience can use both projectors as needed.

I've started requesting 2 projectors sometimes when speaking. I am still working on the model so it's a bit messy right now but conceptually it feels like it could work. Knocking the sage off the stage often takes multiple tries and approaches.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

We are doing something like this at Crofton House School in Vancouver, Canada with one wireless projector and one screen. Teacher and student computers can connect wirelessly to the projector, and it only takes a few clicks to change which computer is projecting on the big screen. An added bonus is that the computer being projected can be physically positioned anywhere in the room - there is no sage on the stage!

Pamela Livingston said...

David, wonderful. This is a real flattening of the classroom isn't it, with the wireless projector in this way. I think wireless projectors have come a long way in the past few years. Thanks for posting about how Compton House in Vancouver is empowering learners.

Lisa Nielsen said...

Love this and do this! I always bring my own projector and netbook to presentations. One projects what I'm talking about. The other projects audience response/reactions thoughts. Thanks for capturing this in a post. I must share more widely.