It happens about once every semester. I get an idea to actually use some of the stuff the University has paid for, put an incredible amount of work into it, and discover (again) that computer products sold to schools usually don't work and are incredibly overpriced.
The culprit this time around is a Smart Podium. The thing apparently costs in excess of $3000, and it's supposed to allow me to work all kinds of magic when I'm doing a presentation in front of class. If I don't like using a mouse, I can use the pen and simply tap the screen to get mouse things to happen. I can write on the screen and it will appear in the projected image. I can draw things. The machine can recognize my handwriting and save it as a file. I can save the whole thing and print it out for students.
It simply doesn't work. The mouse tapping part does, but nothing else. Apparently (also in common with other academic software) there's a secret setting somewhere and everyone assumes that we all know it.
IF the thing worked, I'd like it, though it's sort of an overkill idea. Whiteboard markers cost something like $1.30 each. For the cost of this technological wonder (if it actually worked!) the college could buy 2,307 whiteboard markers. And they would work.
This is getting to be a pattern. The people at Ashland wonder about my hostility toward their computer systems. Ditto (though with less intensity) at Akron. It's because I simply want things that will work, will make my teaching day go more easily, and will not make me look like an idiot in front of my students. But that's not part of the corporate culture of suppliers.
OK. I finally did get the podium to work, and it does beautifully. I only had to do an intensive Internet search (about 90 minutes) and contact two different IT guys at their company (about an hour each) to learn how to actually start the program to make the thing run. I suspect I am now the only faculty member at the University who knows how to operate the thing.
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