Technology

I teach in a classroom with lots of electronic stuff.  There's a computer, of course, mounted on a podium of sorts that is bolted to the floor.  There is a data projector and a screen, and even a smartboard that should, in theory, permit me to write on my powerpoints during a lecture.  Each student's place in the room has a workstation, so we can do fun demonstrations during class.  Sounds great, right?

Except... it isn't.  The screen for the projector comes down over the whiteboard so I can't use the whiteboard and the projector at the same time.  The smartboard is, for reasons beyond comprehending, located behind the podium that is bolted to the floor, so it is useless for demonstration purposes even on those rare occasions when the smartboard software works.  The individual workstations require a login that depends on some central authentication, and it is more frequently the case that a login "fails to be verified" instead of taking students to the software they need.

Rather than using the built-in tech, I've been bringing my own tablet.  This requires a completely different collection of electronic devices.  To project the tablet screen I have to plug a dongle into a switch, but the switch doesn't like HDMI, having been constructed well over 10 years ago.  So I have another converter-type thing that the dongle has to plug into, and I have to disconnect everything from the switch, bypassing it completely, to hook the converter to the projector.

This has been working fairly well (I get to the classroom about 15 minutes early every day to perform these electronic gymnastics), until last week.  My dongle has decided to disconnect from the projector at random intervals averaging about 15 minutes long.  Disconnection requires that I reset the dongle, restart the tablet, and reconnect the tablet to the dongle.  I noticed last week that the dongle felt pretty warm during all this drama, and so Friday, after hooking and unhooking everything, I balanced my dongle on top of an ice pack I borrowed from the main office refrigerator.

It worked!  I got through an entire lecture with no interruptions.