Pedagogues & Broomsticks, Part 2

In this next installment of Pedagogues & Broomsticks (aka - the technological travails of Professors I've encountered along The Way), I'd like to detail the current scene. I sit, in class, watching no fewer than 5 educators trying to figure out how to get presentations from 3 different laptops, onto 2 very large screens. The 2 screens simulcast the same a/v feed, the 5 people will only present one at a time, and 2 pairs are sharing 1 laptop per pair. 3 laptops use VGA out. 1 uses DVI. 1 looks like it has an S-Video out.  Convoluted? Yes. Painful to watch? Even more so. Number of icons on one professors left-side docked Windows XP taskbar? The total of survivors from the Titanic might actually be a lower number. Me? I'm a big fan of the path of least resistance, and struggle to understand how something as simple as wiring a classroom for ease-of-use for the non-tech savvy Prof's can be made so disruptively arduous.

Call me crazy, but in today's higher education setting, it's seemingly imperative that educators (and students) maintain more than a passing awareness of how a/v stuffs operate. The old guard of overhead projectors with reusable transparencies is gone the way of the Sugar Daddy (the candy, not the old guy) - as in, you can still find it somewhere, but only in the most specialized of spots. So here's my plea to all of you "Technology is not my thing" types: reach down, grab your bootstraps, and pull. Hard.

And if your answer is no, then stop wasting everyone's time and make way.