Wide Screen in the Classroom

This summer, as part of the classroom technology life cycle replacement program, LTS continued to move towards support of the now ubiquitous wide-screen laptop format.

Nine classrooms were upgraded, including Neville 1, which received two wide-screen projectors and a huge new projection screen. These nine rooms join the 12 rooms that were updated last year and all of the 19 new classrooms and labs in the STEPS building.

The classrooms currently equipped with wide-screen capability are: Drown 202, Fritz 605, Imbt B101, Lewis 512, Maginnes 102, 113, 290, Mohler 110, Neville 1, Packard 101, 208, 258, 360, Sinclair 106, RBC 71, 101, 151,211, 241, Whitaker 270, ZAC 211, 345 and all of the technology-equipped rooms in STEPS.

PowerPoint users who are teaching in one of these updated classrooms may want to take advantage of the program’s 16x10 wide screen design option: Go to the Design tab, select Page Setup, and then select On-screen Show (16x10) from the drop down menu.

It is best to select this option before preparing a presentation. If it is necessary to make this change to an existing presentation, it’s important to check every slide as drawing objects, clip art, photos, or text boxes may have shifted.

While wide-screen projection will make attachment of laptops to classroom projection systems easier, there are still many potential complications as manufacturers change display resolutions, graphics card capabilities and connectors.

A detailed discussion on connecting laptops, with information about connectors, resolution, adapters, and the steps you may need to take to successfully connect to a presentation system is available in an article in a recent edition of Lehigh Lab Notes.

-- Elia Schoomer

Article posted September, 2010

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