I periodically teach licensing classes in different cities. The company I do this for rents a variety of conference rooms and facilities. I take along a nice LED projector or use the monitor in the conference room when one is provided. All the students are required to bring a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, since their course material and references are provided to them in PDF format.
However, some facilities don’t have a good wall on which I can project the PPTs. And some have these dinky little 27" monitors for a room that holds 15 people. It’s not practical for me to bring a decent projection screen or a larger monitor because I fly in and out. (I’ve tried some lightweight folding screens and they are a pain to work with.)
One thing I do have are several portable wifi routers. I can have a private WLAN set up in minutes using my own laptop. Students can easily log on for the day.
If I do this (private WLAN with the instructor laptop and all student laptops signed in), how can I present my PPT to their individual local devices? I want them to be able to view the slide deck as I present it, complete with animations for quizzes, etc. Basically, I want to do it as if we are using Teams or Zoom and I’m sharing one of my windows (Powerpoint) with everyone.
Is there an easy way to do this? Is there a cheap version of Teams-type software suitable for a small private LAN? Am I missing something obvious? I don’t mind dedicating one of my kick-around laptops for this purpose only.
Obviously, I have no control over whether they bring Windows, Mac,Android, or Chrome devices.
The easiest way to stream your screen to many others is using a service like zoom/teams.
Those usually require an internet connection.
I do not know of a service to stream something to multiple devices on a local network without an internet connection or installing software on the devices.
About 23 years ago, I was working at an educational institution and set up a few computer class rooms. We had a software that was a mixture of screen sharing, monitoring and remote tool, so I could share my screen from the instructor’s machine, get access to any student’s machine and monitor all student’s screens. For the life of me I can’t remember the name, but I’m sure such software still exists. But it was a server-client architecture, so you had to install the client on the student’s machines, which might not be an option in your case if the students don’t have sufficient rights for installing software.
ETA: just thought about modern remote access tools. I’m sure you can share screens with tools like Teamviewer or Anydesk, though I never used them that way. But that also means that the software must be installed and set up on all machines. I’m also not sure if this works over a LAN or if it requires an internet connection.
I’m coming across apps like ScreenTask, which allow my laptop to act as a web server for the display. Students can enter my local IP and designated port number (in my case, 192.168.1.XX:7070) on a browser and stream my display. However, it looks like ScreenTask won’t display an image other than with a 4:3 aspect ratio, cutting off the right side.
BeepBeep is another option, but I haven’t got it to work yet. Same for VLC, though the process seems a bit clearer.
Ideally, whatever I use, I would prefer it to stream a specific window (PowerPoint) rather than just the entire display. This may be asking too much.
OK, I’m going to be that guy… Why not just get a portable movie screen on a tripod? You’ve already got the projector, and that way you’re not dependent on the location having a suitable screen or blank wall.
I fly to every class. I could probably take a folding screen by itself, but I can’t really manage anything with a frame. (I’m already carrying two laptops, a projector, extension cords, HDMI cables, etc., and everything else for four days when I board.)
What would really be helpful would be if the company actually asked about the equipment before I got there, or if they required a minimum size monitor or projection screen as part of the rental. Nope. They choose a cheap place and just give me an address.
Also, if I didn’t make it clear, I don’t want to use Zoom or Teams because there may or may not be useful wifi in the classroom. Most of the time, no problem. There’s an SSID and key on a card in the conference/class room. If there isn’t, then we have to figure out sharing a hotspot or whether everybody is OK being on cellular for the 8 hours of class.
But you now what they say about the spice. People pay lots of money, show up for the class, and expect everything to roll. Many of them get pissed because the company is not providing lunch.
Any sort of solution you come up with along these lines will require client software on the students’ computers. At this point, you can probably count on everyone having Zoom and a web browser, but probably can’t assume anything beyond that. I don’t know if Zoom has an option for working on a WLAN directly, but if you can get an Internet connection (tethered to your phone, say), they could definitely connect, and I’m pretty sure that Internet protocols are intelligent enough that most of the data wouldn’t actually need to go anywhere outside of the room (i.e., it’d use only a trivial amount of the phone’s data plan).
Alternately, instead of a roll-up projection screen, how about a white bedsheet and a handful of binder clips and strong magnets? There will probably be something you can mount the sheet to, in most places: A shelf, or a magnetic whiteboard, or whatever.
I’m not sure about that. The OP mentioned a solution that works as a web server and can be accessed via any browser, but then you can run into firewall restrictions and maybe have to create firewall rules for using the respective port, which the user may have no system permissions for.
I have used a sheet in the past. Sometimes there’s a whiteboard that works. But you might be surprised how often conference rooms are set up and finished out in a way that makes it very difficult to put anything up to use as a screen. The only usable wall might be to one side of a long conference table.
The PPTs have quite a bit of text, including quiz questions and pictures of tables and charts taken from the reference books. This material is not in the student workbooks. If it were, a smaller display would probably be acceptable and the students could just follow along.
I know I sound like a whiner, but showing up at a room the morning of the class and finding some less than ideal conditions is beginning to be a PITA. Only happens one time out of five, but it’s enough. (“Oh, that room only has a 32” monitor? I thought it was about 55". Just have all your students move to one end of the table. Or, maybe you can use the blinds on the window as a projection screen? The motorized screen in our description of the room stopped working a couple weeks ago. Sorry. And, yes, the room will indeed hold 16 people…if you can find 8 spare chairs and put them along the wall.")
Any way of sharing your screen with other screens would require some sort of connection with your computer. If not using wifi (or cellular) it would need to be a wired connection. And then Teams and Zoom work on a wired connection as well.
Unless by “wifi” you mean there may not be an Internet connection. I don’t think Teams or Zoom would work in that case.
I take it that not all of the rooms have white walls? Most schools I’ve been to always did.
Could you save your PPT as a PDF and send that to your students? If they’re required to bring laptops, they could follow along while you lecture. Animations can be saved as MP4s and embedded in the PDF, or sent as attachments.
Yes, I mean wireless internet access. It is not as ubiquitous as some might think.
Since I have a wireless router, I could easily set up a private wireless LAN for the class attendees.
The company will lease a conference room for a few days, based on student registrations. A “class” may be 5 to 20 people. The leased room is most often a large, long conference table. Students have reference materials they must bring, so each student needs some reasonable working space. The walls are frequently decorated with prints or weird textured wallpaper. And it’s only practical to use either end of the table, so choices are limited.
Unfortunately, there are timed quizzes and material that we do not want “revealed” too early. This is a class to help students pass a certification exam. The idea is to help them develop their skills in using the reference materials in an efficient manner. (The exams allow less than 90 seconds per question.)
There are literally animated timers on the screen that count down seconds for the practice questions.
In addition, the company sells an online version and self-paced study course. They’re leery about sending out digital copies of the presentations. I’m not sure they would even allow me to do what I’m considering here (i.e., display the class slide deck on their personal laptops).
My old department used to use Articulate/Storyline to develop accreditation courses, which is a PPT mod. IIRC it has a timer feature. It uses multiple-choice Knowledge Checks and Exams, which can be flagged as gradable. Students take the courses through our portal, and can only return to them if we have it flagged where they can retake if they fail. SL can compile results to send to an LMS server that generates certificates if they pass. AFAIK, it can be used in a classroom setting, but we only used it for self-study.
It’s easy to take for granted the accessibility of online learning, but there’s parts of the world where that isn’t possible. I heard that somebody in India rode a train for 8 hours to take a course I designed.