I gave two different lectures on information literacy, one in October and another two weeks ago. In both lectures I used Powerpoint and in both lectures my presentations screwed up. Well, they weren’t that screwed up because I was still able to present my slides, but I wasn’t able to present them the way I programmed them.
At least for my October lecture I knew why but for my recent lecture I could only surmise a guess. For my lecture last October, I created my ppt using PPT 2003 and showed it using PPT 2000. That meant all the animations I programmed into the presentation didn’t work and I discovered this only when I got home. I only had myself to blame for this because I unknowingly used two different laptops thinking that these had similar versions of applications. I was initially in denial but fretting about it wouldn’t bring back the presentation I did that took my three hours to do so I just revised it using the 2000 version.
My recent lecture was the more frustrating one. Having learned my lesson with my earlier lecture, I decided to use my office PC using PPT 98 to create my presentation so I can be sure that the animations will work with a higher version. I spent two hours preparing the content of my presentation which included a song that was to be my opening spiel. When it was time for me to animate the song with the lyrics, it was only then that I discovered that PPT 98 does not support MP3. So I had to have the song converted into a wave file and had to ask a colleague who had the software that can do the conversion. The conversion process was a breeze and I was so excited at the prospect of being able to deliver the presentation with the music.
A few days before my lecture, I was there at the venue to attend a forum but I made sure I informed the technicians who will be assigned to us that I my presentation had audio. The technician told me that wouldn’t be a problem so I was assured that everything would be all right.
Come lecture day, guess what? Things didn’t turn out right at least for that part of the song. What was frustrating was that I practiced that particular slide a couple of times at my office PC just to make sure that the music will play with the text. Knowing that the laptop I was going to use at the venue ran on Windows XP, I thought that the slide will play as expected.
But I was not prepared for the unexpected. When it was my turn to present and having made the introductions, I encouraged the participants to listen closely to the song and even sing along with it. However, when my friend who was assisting me with my presentation clicked on the mouse for the text the music stopped. I made a gesture to repeat the slide but the same thing happened. At this point I personally did the clicking hoping for a miracle. But there was no miracle. I just had to finish the song before I could display the lyrics and went on to my discussion.
Believe me, up until today I’m still asking myself what went wrong. I didn’t bother to look at the laptop’s specs because it was getting late already and I had to rush home. Back at work I recounted what happened to my technicians and all they could tell me was that the laptop’s memory was insufficient to process the audio and text together but there were hardly any files in the laptop because the technicians made it a point to erase all the previous presentations in the memory.
This will remain a mystery to me until the time I come across that laptop again and I will get to the bottom of it.
On the other hand, I’ve learned quite a few lessons from these and all my previous lectures. First, if you’ve got a presentation to make bring your own laptop so that you’re presentation will be just as you had planned. No frustrations; no blaming; everybody is happy. Second, if you can’t bring your own laptop, be at the venue ahead of time so you can set-up early and practice, and make changes in case problems such as what I’ve shared here arise. Believe me, asking about the availability of equipment isn’t enough. Third, go low tech. Use an OHP. This may seem like a funny suggestion but I remember a nun telling me how she prefers to use an OHP over a laptop because the latter is failsafe. After all, as Dr. Dizon said in our lecture in e-learning, the PPT is just a high-tech audio-visual aid.
(For feedback, comments, suggestions email me at openingpagemb@yahoo.com)
