Sometimes You Feel Like You Have Not Even A Remote Idea Of What’s Going On!

Several folks from my department were asked to present on various topics during a school district’s Professional Development day today. Literacy, math, assessment, science, STEM,  … the gamut of what we all do. The day took place at one of the school district’s high schools.

I arrived early and got set-up … used my department’s projector and speaker system – which I was glad I brought since none was really available in the classroom. So no sweat, done this a million times it seems.

Soon the room filled up and I jumped into my presentation a bit early since the room was full and I had lots to get through (I hate feeling that way at the beginning of a presentation or lesson … but that’s what they wanted me to cover … so???). Things were going very smoothly. I seemed to be getting a smattering of chuckles when I was expecting them and not when I wasn’t. My poignant points were having the desired effect … serious, thoughtful faces followed my lead. I was experiencing what many refer to as “Presenter’s Bliss.”

Then it started. I was describing a student project and a video clip was showing when my presentation just skipped to the next slide … and then the next. I sensed that I was squeezing the remote a bit too hard …. maybe …. so I went back and started the clip again and it got done and stopped …. and then it started over on it’s own while I was introducing the next slide. I figured maybe I had switched on the timer feature on my presentation that   automatically switches to the next slide after 15 seconds or so … but I never use that, not sure how to set that up in Keynote. So I plunged ahead after apologizing to my now less-than-enraptured participants.

When it happened again, and again, I switched off the remote and decided to just use the arrow keys on my keyboard. That seemed to work, and after about 5 minutes we were a group in synch once more. Ahhh.

Yes, you got it. The next thing I knew my presentation went back 3 slides while I fought back with the arrow keys, at times wishing that they could really shoot arrows, to only some avail. I even considered restarting my computer while everyone waited and watched to hopefully rid it of whatever demons had taken up residence. But plowing ahead seemed a better choice, so plow I did. Things settled down a bit for the rest of our time and I only wrestled a bit with the randomness …. and I did my best to appear unaffected.

After the room cleared and I’d packed things up I ran into most of the presenters from the classrooms around me and we all commented on our presentations. How many attendees they’d had … reactions and feedback received … the usual stuff. When someone mentioned (have you already figured this out?) how their presentation had gone wonkers on them …  there was a good 5 seconds of silence … then that knowing look flashed on everyones’ faces … our remotes had been changing slides on each others presentations … it had happened to all of us!

Ugh. Lesson learned.

Presentations can be messy!

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3 thoughts on “Sometimes You Feel Like You Have Not Even A Remote Idea Of What’s Going On!

  1. Hello,
    My name is Jennifer Parker. I attend the University of South Alabama and am in the EDM 310 class. I was wondering if you found a way to prevent this from happening again? I’m sure some found it funny while others found it frustrating. I’m wanting to teach Kindergarten, so I’m not sure if this will help me. However, I would love to know how to avoid this in the future. Also I was wondering how your presentation went when you had to plow ahead? Did you keep the interest of the people in the room?

    • Hi Jennifer – 1st, yes the presentation actually went well … it was a bit frustrating, but folks had a bit of a laugh and saw that even someone that is supposed to have some level of tech savvy-ness can at times struggle. And the issues mostly happened far enough apart that the content was understandable.

      Now that I know it was an issue of other remotes, I’d just turn off the remote and remove the reader you plug into your computer to make it work and just use the controls on my laptop to run the presentation. Hope that helps.

  2. Brian,
    Thank you for your response. This did help. I’m still new to some of this technology, but thank you for telling me how you avoid this problem. Hopefully by the time I graduate I will know how to work all programs.