I prepared a beautiful 37 slide powerpoint presentation about Elizabeth Taylor for today's Actresses of the Silver Screen attendees. And a very brilliant talk peppered with sparkling quotes.
Got to the auditorium, put the thumb drive into the computer, and...
Approximately 87% of the images would not display.
How would Miss Taylor handle such a situation, I wondered. With grace and charm, no doubt.
Then I thought of her Oscar-winning performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
But I am not a famous Hollywood actress.
This is what I looked like:
In two weeks, I am scheduled to talk about Claudette Colbert.
I am making sock puppets just in case.
13 comments:
Oh Ouch!! I feel your scream.
This had this happen to me and this is what I discovered.
If you migrate your thumb drive from your Mac to a PC, sometimes a PC will not read the thumb drive due to PC's operation system.
It rare to have a thumb drive go out or the data becoming corrupt. Before you pull your thumb drive, dismount it from the desktop. As a precaution, send a copy to an e-mail web account. If your thumb drive does not work at class, access your e-mail web account from the school computer and download the document for show and tell.
Poor you! Computers are supposed to make our lives easier, too.
Que Lastima! Been there, done that with even primitive non-electronic devices (e.g., 35mm slide projector) My first reaction is to eschew thumb drives--don't really understand them--and stick with old fashioned disks.
Thanks for your notes of support. :)
The problem wasn't with the thumb drive. It was just that some of the photos required a different piece of software than that particular computer had loaded on it. There wasn't time to get the software loaded before my talk. The classroom I'd previously used had all the necessary goodies on it and I naively assumed those were standard.
Reminder of the rule NEVER ASSUME.
Might I respectfully point out that in the Munch it is Nature, not the figure that is screaming. S/he has hands over his/her ears to cut out the scream. I am sure you similarly insulated yourself from the malfunctioning of your high tech environment and handled things with great aplomb from your inner resources.
We've gone all techy in our school, and I can totally identify those moments of technological "moments". Still, things like Prometians/Smart Boards are beautiful things when working properly!
You have won the True Confessions book at Manic Mommy's blog! Drop me an email with your full name, address and we'll get your copy in the mail to you! Congrats! Steph
That happened to me at a school visit recently. I frantically downloaded a single image from my pictures file on my mac, threw it up onto the screen and then did my best song and dance routine ever. Now I wish I'd thought of the sock puppets!
That totally happened to me once. I thought I was going to die. Even the text wouldn't load on some. Asshole computer.
Oh, sock puppets! That's GOT to be better than PowerPoint!!
Haha, I love the Scream.
I was a teacher in China for a time, and my AV stuff never worked. Not even my microphone. And I was teaching 90 students in rows 8 across. So it was, like, as deep as a football field.
My voice is still in recovery.
That must have been awful for you. I'm not sure Elizabeth Taylor would have acted with grace, she probably would have had a huge meltdown and makes several demands on her staff.
CJ xx
p.s. hope the sock puppets work!
I'm sorry about your troubles, but your post was hysterical. The photo of Liz...too much!
Thanks for visiting the other day. Good luck with Claudette!
Catherine
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