General considerations and directions:

o Built-in ceiling-mounted color projectors: 21, 241, 247 Olson, 1102 Hart

o LCD panels and overheads: 307 Surge IV and Porta-Macs

o Hints for improving readability and effectiveness

Some effective projection activities:

o Demonstrating and teaching computer procedures

o Collaborating on brainstorming / response activities

o Demonstrating sentence problems or repeated patterns

o Demonstrating pitfalls of on-line writing assistance

o Melvyl searches and Web research demos

o Paragraph rearrangement and transition exercises

o A Shakespeare-related aside

Recent years have seen significant improvements in equipment for displaying a computer screen in enlarged form. In all of the computer classrooms, the instructor's computer can be displayed on a pull-down screen, facilitating effective demonstrations and shared class activities. Virtually any class work can be adapted for use with overhead projection to good effect, and smooth operation of the projection screen can provide a valuable punctuating change of rhythm for long classes. There are idiosyncrasies from room to room, as well as methods for getting the most pedagogical benefit from this activity.

 Built-in ceiling-mounted color projectors (21, 241, 247 Olson, 1102 Hart)

In rooms with built-in projection systems suspended from the ceiling, the on-off controls are located in a large cabinet. In 241 and 21 Olson, the cabinets are in the front of the room, near the instructor's Mac; the on-off button is at the lower left side of the console, marked with a red indicator that turns to green when the apparatus comes on. Sometimes there is a slight delay (several seconds) where nothing appears to be happening even though the button's light has turned from red to green. In 247 a regular-looking switch near the front door activates the overhead.

Another problem is that the screen saver, a dark screen with a white clock against it, may sometimes be displayed if your instructor's Mac has gone into screen saver mode, which can cause you to think nothing is happening!

The 241 Olson classroom screen has a motor, with the switch (marked with up and down arrows) located to the right of the whiteboard. Though the NEC color displays are brighter and better than earlier versions, in most rooms you'll want to dim the lights somewhat for contrast and readability. The color and resolution even on good machines leaves something to be desired, and the configuration of the classrooms makes some sight lines rather bad. Do encourage your students to move closer or turn around if they can't see well, and unless you are doing a follow-along demo you'll probably want to ask them to turn away from their own screens.

In 307 Surge IV and with the PowerBook Porta-Mac, the display is not wired in, but depends on an LCD (Liquid-Crystal Display) panel and a standard overhead projector. The LCD panel, connected to the video output port of the instructor's computer, sits on the bed of the overhead, and the panel makes shadows that appear on the display screen. Because of the nature of LCD devices, viewing angle is critical: if you look at the panel itself you may not be able to see anything displayed; likewise, faulty contrast controls can render the display invisible as well. If you have properly set up the panel on the overhead and nothing seems to be displayed, try the following troubleshooting steps:

Handy hint: whenever possible, familiarize yourself with the room itself before class, especially before trying something for the first time. When I teach in 307 Surge I have now gotten into the habit of getting to class early and checking the video arrangements, so that I can notify the site attendant (across the courtyard in room 301) before I'm actually teaching.

As rooms become equipped with dimmer switches and incandescents, use them--they are a good compromise between darkness and fluorescent glare.

As with all exercises, make notes of filenames and diskettes before class starts, and try to prepare the entire demonstration, including launching the word processor, opening the file, and making any format changes for readability, before class even starts (or while the class is doing an in-class writing or reading task), so that all you have to do is turn on the projector. This includes marking your files with benchmarks (or Word 6 bookmarks) so you know where you are; programs like PowerPoint make these presentations easier to choreograph and pre-test, but they await an Appendix to this manual.

I have found that the better prepared I am and the more smoothly my demonstrations work, the more respect everyone has for class time, and the faster all students execute everything in the classroom. To be honest, though, when I am in preoccupied-teacher mode I have little patience for fumbling around, but instead have a pretty short fuse: I will perhaps too quickly abandon the computer demonstration in favor of a conventional chalkboard / whiteboard demo.

As much as you can, find and keep your own rhythm; students tend to be a little more patient than I think they are, and what seems like an eternity when you're fiddling with the mouse may not have as terrible an effect as you think. When a display glitch occurs, for example if you are displaying a student sentence for editing, you can have the student write the sentence on the whiteboard for you, freeing you up to introduce the topic while s/he writes. This is why I never come to class with only disk versions of an exercise file, and it's also why I try to avoid having any idée fixe about what exactly must happen: a spirit of improvisation is absolutely essential.

o Demonstrating and teaching computer procedures

o Collaborating on brainstorming / response activities

o Demonstrating sentence problems or repeated patterns

o Demonstrating pitfalls of on-line writing assistance

o Melvyl searches and Web research demos

o Paragraph rearrangement and transition exercises

Sometimes it is difficult to decide which exercises to do on the computer and which to do on a conventional overhead or by other means. It was to preserve such flexibility that we have tried to include a standard overhead projector (flatbed) in every room we use as a classroom. Demonstrations using overhead projection fall into several categories, and each will be discussed in turn

Possibly your first use of the screen will be to demonstrate basic classroom procedures to your class. This is obvious enough, but it is fraught with peril for the first-time CAI instructor, or for the veteran in a newly reconfigured classroom. The public-ness of one's struggles seems far worse than the pratfall effects of broken or screeching chalk, tripping over projector cords, or dropping papers.

Here as elsewhere, do yourself and your class a favor by test-driving your lesson plan in a non-pressure setting; I say this many times in this manual, but you would be surprised at how many instructors have come to me in a panic that was largely preventable. Figure that if you can't run something smoothly in an empty classroom, you certainly won't be able to in front of 25 students who (you think) will chuckle obnoxiously at your every typo and missed double-click.

That said, the overhead is an excellent way to walk your students through procedures early in the quarter; do this, though, with the caveat that they must either attend Macintosh Survival Classes, buddy up with a colleague and otherwise get up to speed in the first week, or you will show them no mercy. Ideally, taking composition in a computer classroom will provide enough advantages for you to argue that they must show some responsibility in return: these are classes in how to write, not how to use computers, and certain lame ducks cannot be allowed to monopolize your and your students' time.

It's interesting to see that as we move into a maturing period in computer literacy the problems of training have changed: the gap between those in-the-know and those out-of-the-know has increased, and the "outs" are also more ideologically or stubbornly anti-computer than they used to be. Further complicating the issue is the surge in Windows-literate students who look down on the Mac world and blame it for their inabilities! Don't engage them in debate, but anyone who's worked with networks on both platforms knows that there are things that the Mac does better, and things Windows does better.

As with any mode of technical teaching and coaching, structure your presentation, using both telling and showing; I've found the following scheme works well:

For example, if you want your students to learn how to use the drop-off folder, you might want to give a context first: make crude whiteboard drawings of various filing cabinets including a floppy disk, the individual hard drives, and the classroom file server; then follow up with the AppleShare hierarchy of Class Folders, individual classes, Pick-Up / Drop-off, and actual specific Drop-offs, and introduce the notion of access privileges and the confirmation steps.

Only then should you move to your demonstration. I have found that the scheme described above works well, and keeps the instructor a bit more in control of the rhythm (rather than placing you immediately in troubleshooting or rescue mode). Have your students turn their attention to the overhead screen, without their hands on keyboards, and follow along with you as you talk your way through each step. This is where you can sound your warnings about when to double-click and when not to, and what the various error messages actually signify. Only when you have completed your dry run do you say, "Now you follow along with me," and walk them through the steps together.

It's important to note, though, that doing server-intensive tasks simultaneously on 25 machines can create electronic logjams that lead to frustration and further delays: when a student's screen doesn't seem to match the one on the overhead, that student may try stupid things like random double-clicking or indignant hand-wringing. When a computer is seeking something from the server, the network-activity symbol (two arrows) appears and/or flashes in the upper-left corner of the screen, next to the apple icon. The computer may even appear to be frozen, but for the blinking of that symbol. Knowing when to wait, and when to give up on a computer and restart is a delicate judgment call, one which I have not firmly mastered.

Be sure to avail yourself of experienced computer-savvy students who can help their neighbors, and be sure to float around to help students with problems. Ideally, I try to schedule activities so that students who successfully follow instructions have something they can be doing right away; thus, the whole class doesn't come to a grinding halt as you scurry around tending to people who have double-clicked their way into some other teacher's class folder.

Finally: stress that students themselves must be responsible for this phase of their education, that such demonstrations are only for the early part of the class. Remember, too, that the more you use the computers, the more practice they get; the corollary is, the more you expect from them, the better they will do. An easy-to-grade Mac basics quiz is currently under development, and should be a way to steer students into appropriate learning methods.

 Collaborating on brainstorming / response activities

One of the first activities we used in Davis computer classrooms was a game that Betsy Davis dubbed "gag the teacher"--where the instructor served as the transcribing secretary for the class' responses to an open-ended brainstorming question. Without the burden of polishing, students could fire off contributions while the instructor typed; after a given amount of time the resulting material could be grouped into clusters or ranked in priority. With the overhead display serving as a high-tech chalkboard, students could use this visible collaboration in individual attempts at consolidation, and discuss them later.

This can still be very effective in stimulating discussion, since you can easily save these notes and phrases and sentences in electronic form and make the resulting file available to all students via a pick-up folder or e-mail. On the down side, such a session quickly points up your limitations as a typist! 

For students who depend too heavily on the passive voice or to-be constructions, the overhead can provide a vivid demonstration of their over-reliance and the echo-effects it creates. As with other exercises of this type, the workshop aspect of the course has to be clearly established, and you have to be careful not to trample feelings. If you want, you can take a file from a previous year's course or from our files to keep from singling anyone out. I sometimes use examples of my own writing from years ago (undergraduate papers) that illustrate some of these characteristics, with the side benefit that students realize that I myself would have had to have worked hard to get a good grade in my own course!

Assuming that you have a paper that contains a preponderance of a particular kind of construction, here are a couple of techniques for creating a demonstration. From the top of the document, use the "Replace" command under the "Edit" menu to change "is" to "is" and "are" to "are." While this can be effective, it is a fairly clunky way to go, and is one that doesn't recognize the need for "to be" verbs in forming tenses.

A better method: pre-format the demonstration file, with the original version first and the highlighted version afterward. Scroll through the file showing the effect of weak verb constructions, then move through the formatted version for dramatic effect. Often students don't actually believe that they are relying on a single construction, but this method makes it unmistakable. The same method can be used to greater effect with verbal nouns: go through and boldface all the -tion words in some student essays and you will be amazed at the preponderance of abstractions and the paucity of hard-hitting subject-verb constructions. A formatted sample will be found in the Web resource files, but I've found that such canned examples are less hard-hitting than a peer's work.

Of course, these exercises are most vivid in extreme cases, and the computer demonstration merely gussies up the time tested technique (employed by many a teacher) of circling every instance of passive construction in red ink. Besides emphasizing error (and skating close to the rub-puppy's-nose-in-it behavior modification school), such demos can lead students to try to eliminate all vestiges of passive voice and to-be verbs, with the result being an eerie and stilted (but supposedly teacher-pleasing) mode of synthetic prose. All writers have to learn "how much is too much," and we can't simply declare war on some scapegoat du jour.

Clearly, in the CAI classroom as elsewhere, follow-up is key, along with a judicious sense of balance--it's not enough to point out an error or pattern and hope that this will improve student writing. Always use such demonstrations in conjunction with exercises specifically addressing verbal agility, transforming passive constructions into active ones or weak verbal-noun structures into more dynamic ones. Quick-hitting sentence drills with Daedalus InterChange work well here, where every student can try a couple of sentences and then send the results to the class discussion space, especially when you raise the lights, have students work, send their contributions, and then return to the overhead to go quickly through particularly promising or noteworthy revisions.

Several other exercises can showcase the computer and the projection screen. The "grammar-checker" functions of most word processing packages have become increasingly appealing for students, despite their limitations. Microsoft Word's grammar checking (under the Tools menu) will flag passive constructions and an amazing assortment of other "problems" that aren't problems. The "suggestions" or remedies are often inadequate, misleading, or hilariously off-the-wall. Putting your own or your students' prose through such a survey routine can be an instructive way to demonstrate why no one should rely on computer-assisted grammar checking: computers don't "get" meaning, nor have programmers successfully incorporated context sensitivity into their otherwise mechanical pattern-flagging routines. The computer simply cannot replace a trained ear for the language. 

Along similar lines, you can use the overhead display to show why students should steer clear of prepackaged or Web-found essays, by finding an essay from the SchoolSucks web site, and tearing it apart. This has the advantage of anonymity, allowing you to show your grading standards in action, as well as your expectations for clear, thoughtful responses to assignments. Calling attention to ready-made papers also might give students pause, since here at least is a teacher aware of the burgeoning problem of Web-enabled plagiarism. Nonetheless, such demos can be risky: you are showing students what might be tempting for some, and your whole project might backfire unexpectedly. 

Although the exact techniques of on-line library and Web research lie beyond the scope of this version of the Guide, it's important to note that the overhead projection system offers an excellent way to demonstrate some of the Internet-related tools now available to scholars and students. Instructors can guide their classes on a tour of especially important resources and sites, showing how to extract useful information from the masses of data available, and then turn students loose to follow their own leads. Students can do the same for their peers. However, in some classrooms, heavy Web browser use will compromise local network response, as the limited-capacity "information hose" gets clogged with traffic, so such simultaneous sessions are not always advisable.

What we are finding at this stage of the Web revolution is akin to what librarians have long known: that mere access to information does not lead to smarter or even better-informed students. Many of our students have more facility than the average instructor when it comes to manipulating a Web browser or search engine, but few of them have had formal training in evaluating Web resources for accuracy and reliability, much less integrating them into an original and effective argument or research effort.

Partnerships between the Library's instructional committee, the Campus Writing Center, and other campus entities are now addressing these needs, and instructors (for example, Susan Palo of the Writing Center) who have developed ways to hone skills like Web page evaluation are encouraged to make their suggestions and contributions known as this manual is brought up to date on the latest and best technology-enhanced teaching.

To help teach transitions and large-scale revision work, I sometimes provide a model response to an essay topic, but first remove all the transitional sentences. There are lots of permutations of this exercise: in one, all students have a hard copy and disk copy of the transition-less essay in front of them, and have five or ten minutes to write in transitions; this is a perfect time to divide into teams of two or three, and have one student do the typing and the others editing. After an appropriate amount of work time, you can begin inserting transition elements and linking paragraphs. I sometimes poll all the student groups quickly, having them sing out their attempts clearly for the rest of the class; you can also use the Timbuktu screen-peek utility to project each group's screen.

Getting the result to the demonstration screen presents several tactical options, depending on the particular software running in your room, and your abilities as a typist. Once students have agreed on a particularly good version, and if your classroom has the Timbuktu "control" option operating, you can actually go into the particular file, say on "Mac 14," highlight the sentence, copy it, and paste it into your own document for all to see. If this option is not available, you can either type the sentence into the appropriate slot, have one of them do it, or send the sentence (saved as a file) via the file server.

This general idea is also adaptable to Daedalus InterChange sessions, in concert with specific subordination or coordination sentence-building techniques. Move quickly on to subsequent paragraphs, or save the follow-up for homework: have each student or group finish providing transition elements, but have them boldface their additions, and submit the results to a drop-off folder. You can then take the best of these and consolidate them for display at the next meeting of the class, or post them to the class newsgroup or mailing list.

To make the exercise more challenging, you can try scrambling either the paragraphs or the sentences within a paragraph. The paragraph-order exercise can help illustrate several important techniques of the professional writer: I have successfully photocopied a scrambled-paragraph essay and handed it out in individual paragraphs for the students themselves to rearrange. Bringing in a couple of rolls of scotch tape allows teams to physically rearrange a sequence of points, varying the effect with the order, and adding connecting material as necessary.

Forcing students to articulate what they are doing (and why they are doing it) makes this a critical-thinking exercise as well, especially if you follow up the craft or joinery aspect with a discussion of the ways such revision should fit into a larger writing process.

The same exercise works interestingly on a more microscopic level, as I discussed in the "Revision" section of the previous chapter. I got a paragraph in a Neuroscience essay that was so randomly organized that I had a hard time making suggestions for improvement. Then I realized I could make the students figure it out: I gave them eight strips of paper with one sentence on each, some tape, and a file containing the eight sentences, and had them build away. First they arranged the sentences physically, then translated that arrangement to the file version, then printed out the files.

Interestingly, several quite different orders worked well, a fact that dovetailed perfectly with a point I had been making all quarter: that paragraph construction and organization depended upon and was dependent upon where the paragraph was in a larger rhetorical structure, and what role it was expected to play in that structure. Having several equally "good" but very different paragraphs proved this point, and corroborated what I had been saying throughout the term. Departmental resource files contain examples, and more will be made available as this guide is updated and augmented.

In general I've found that students very rarely do this kind of high-level revision, and even sneer at it at first in a computer classroom--a typical comment is "John, don't you know that the computer makes cutting and pasting a lot easier?" However, a basic fact remains: while the computer facilitates the final version, the limits of the 25-line screen make this process very very difficult (and therefore unlikely) without the physical artifact to manipulate. Archiving the different approaches, and having the students analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different arrangements--can be a useful follow-up.  

Here as elsewhere, if we can intervene in the writing process a little earlier, and get our students to start their drafting and re-reading earlier, we will encourage more revision and better revision. If we don't, then we are doomed to confirm what the pioneers of computer-assisted writing instruction found out--that the computer does not make a poor writer into a good writer, but produces more copious poor writing, with neater margins and fewer typos! 

While teaching a Shakespeare class last year, added an optional discussion section in a computer classroom, and I stumbled on a potentially interesting demonstration using the Search and Replace capabilities of any word-processor. I was teaching the gory but fascinating Titus Andronicus, and wanted to highlight some thematic issues that this early play was exploring. I had downloaded a text-file version of the play, act by act, from the "Education" grab-bag of an otherwise undistinguished CD-ROM disk (text versions are also available over the Web), and had used the "Find" command to search for the word "honour."  

Not surprisingly, I found many hits--but when I globally replaced "honor" with "honour," in boldface, the preponderance came through very effectively. In the first act characters ring the changes on the word and the concept, from honor to dishonor to honorable, main verbs, participles, on and on. Here was a nice example of the computer facilitating the graphic demonstration of this echo effect--and the computer in its literal-mindedness was actually more effective than a paper concordance would have been. Because the search-and-replace picked up all forms that included the word "honour," the syntactic variety was immediately obvious in ways that would have been more difficult to appreciate on a concordance page.

Clearly this is only one example of what can be done in a literature class with such tools. Besides thematic explorations (and instructors could pre-format demonstration files to highlight combinations like love and fortune), having a text version ready to word-process can facilitate a cut-and-paste exercise in which a student selects a single character and arranges every one of her speeches one after the other, a technique that can clearly show verbal habits (as for example when lower-class figures adopt--or fail to adopt--characteristically submissive sentence patterns).

 For teachers of poetry, clearly, having text versions of poems can make certain points easily visible. Simply recognizing the sentence patterns in a writer like Milton is hard, but judicious use of a formatted file can show beginnings and ends of sentences or clauses, emphasize verb usage or Latinisms, or bring out particular issues of prosody. As more and more literary works become available as text files, analysis demonstrations can also become more extensive, with the creativity of the instructor the only limit.

Clearly with the advent of highly readable overhead-projection devices, the computer classroom shows distinct advantages for the kinds of tasks demanded by composition and critical-thinking instruction. Demonstrations and