Disclaimer: Although I am calling this a "tutorial", it basically explains how I do things. You may or may not follow it completely. Also, if you come up with something easier and more intuitive, please let me know.

My basic premise is to use the Windows 7 Enterprise computer in the classrooms. This one is already connected to all the necessary hardware required to use the SMART Board technologies and the projectors etc. Also, you can simply plug in your TurningPoint RF receiver into the USB port (any one of the three) on the big monitor itself.

Secondly, I use Dropbox. It is a cloud-based storage/locker service that works very well with my setup here. Also, I use the free version for my teaching - that gives me about 2 GB of space, which is plenty for all the talks along with media, student response files and smart scriblings files.

Many seem reluctant to use a cloud service like Dropbox. I find that th econvenience of this service coupled with the security it offers outweighs any other way of transfering your lectures to the classroom computer. Another important factor is that at the end of class, you can simply save everything to your Dropbox folder which resides right on your account on the computer and not worry about any USB sticks, for example. (Remember, this is *your account* on the classroom computer; no one else sees your Dropbox folder.)

With all that said, let's begin. This applies to PowerPoint presentations on a Windows 7 machine and TurningPoint 2008. It will work the same if you make your slides on VirtualBox on Linux or Parallels on MAC OS X. Here, I will *not* talk about TurningPoint Anywhere and Keynote. If someone else wants to complement this "tutorial" with MAC specific things, I can link that here.

This is still a work in progress, and I shall keep improving it until no further improvements are needed!

  1. Touch the little screen next to (to the right of) the big monitor. Touch the Center Screen button. The center projection screen will start revealing itself and the projector will start warming up.
  2. When ready, hit the Lectern tab (the leftmost one) on the little screen. Then select Sympodium. This will turn on the computer connected to the big monitor. If it doesn't, check if the monitor is turning off, or if the computer is physically turned off. The computer sits below the podium on the left. Just press the on/off button.
  3. Log in to your account using BU id and Kerberos password. If this is your first time logging in to this machine, it'll take a while to load. (Note: Use ad\username for the username.)
  4. Once your account is loaded, you will see a toolbar on the left. Click the "wheel" and select Orient from the pop-up window. Then using the pen (usually hiding behind the monitor), hit the targets one by one. (You'll know what I mean by this when you do it!) Now you have oriented the screen to its projection, and the pen will respond properly. (You can drag-an-drop the orient icon on the toolbar for easy access next time.)
  5. Next, your Dropbox will remind you that your files have been synched and ready for you to use. You lecture is now available! DO NOT open your ppt(x) from here! See next bullet. (If you haven't yet downloaded Dropbox, do so now. Go to drobox.com. Install the program - you can create an account later too if you don't already have one. It will ask for administrator's information, which you obviously don't have! Say NO or Cancel to that dialog. Dropbox will now propmt you to install it without administrative priviledges. That's the beauty of it. Say yes, and you have Dropbox in your Windows Explorer.)
  6. In the previous bullet, I said *do not* open your ppt from Dropbox on your machine. This is because PPT does not open turningPoint (TP) software with it. So you have to launch TP from the "Start" menu. This will launch PPT with TP. Then go to File, Open. Go to dropbox from here and open the lecture PPT.
  7. Reset your TP session before beginning (just to be safe).
  8. When you switch to Slide Show mode, the SMART pen input thingy will activate. Now you can write on your slides and have it simultaneously project on the screen. CAREFUL: If you hit ESCape now, it'll ask you to save drawings. You could say yes, then it'll save your drawings.
  9. Once your lecture is done and you have both drawings and TP students' response data, you can save everything in Dropbox. This is how I do it. After I am done, I hit escape. That prompts a save of the drawings. I say yes. Then I exit PPT (red cross on top right). This prompts PPT to ask me to save the PPT. I say yes. (It is already in Dropbox, so that is where it saves it too!) Then TP dialog pops asking to save session data. I say yes. Save dialog pops up. I click Dropbox on the left bar to enter Dropbox folder, and hit save. So I have all participants data in my Dropbox. (Worry not - these data only consist of clicker numbers and responses, it has absolutely NO student information.)
  10. Then log off. In reality, this process takes less than a minute, so the next professor does not get a chance to get mad at you :) (Not for this reason anyway!)
  11. Now on my laptop, I have a program from TP called Results Manager. I already set it up so that the participants list is obtained from the registered data on their website and put in the program. (You can download the list and load it into the program, or let the program get the list itself.) Then I open my Dropbox folder on my laptop (the files I saved in it in the classroom are already synched by now) and drag and drop the latest session data file on the program. A quick pop-up confirming details later, I have all student responses in the manager program. (Yes, this means that you DO NOT need to have your participants list loaded on the classroom computer during lecture. I keep the default setting of "Auto".) That's it!