Ben Edelman 2000-12-10 12:53
In a recently-renovated classroom, we're fortunate enough to have multiple (three!) LCD projectors and screens, each capable of receiving a distinct XGA signal for display on a different screen.
This is intended for videoconferencing, and we've already used it for a couple nontraditional applications (powerpoint on one screen, web surfing on another, a student taking notes on a third, for example), but I'd like to put it to another use that's somewhat trickier: A PowerPoint presentation that spans multiple screens.
If any of you have seen old multiple slide projector shows (you know, the kind with fades, etc. from, I imagine, before the popularity / cost effectiveness of film projectors), you know what I'm thinking. One screen shows, say, the overall outline of where the discussion is heading, while another screen shows the current focus point. (With three screens, well, who knows... but the idea is the same.)
Tried this last week with two different computers connected to two different projectors. It was OK, but it was hard to keep track of which screen needed to be advanced when (and sometimes both needed to be advanced at once, etc.). Not nearly so easy as the standard "press the button on the wireless slide advancer" that we're all so spoiled by.
Ideally, a software program would make it possible to preprogram the sequence of advances -- first advance the first screen, then the second screen three times, then the first and second simultaneously, etc., all manipulable in a nice GUI format. (Maybe even tied into PowerPoint in a way that lets the program keep track of the number of advances it takes to complete the various steps of an elaborate PowerPoint build?)
I have indeed already varified that PowerPoint can display two slide shows on two different screens when used with MultiMon. (Just press your "To next monitor" shortcut with the second presentation on screen, and then you'll have one on each screen.) I'm a VB programmer myself, and the description above seems readily doable -- design a data structure, figure out how to send keystrokes to the intended window, and then I"m in business.
But of course I'd just as soon not reinvent the wheel. Hence I ask here: Does anyone have any significantly better idea as to how to do this? (Multiple networked computers, rather than multimon on a single computer? It's no problem for us to produce multiple computers in this classroom.) Any existing software that will do the job? (Any Win32 programmers in the house who would like to get in touch off-list re the possibility of writing this code as a work-for-hire or on some other collaborative basis?)
Finally, anyone else with multiple projectors in an educational (or, indeed, any kind of presentation) context? Thoughts on how to use them effectively?
Ben Edelman
Harvard Law School
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