Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

It’s my roommate’s birthday today. We’re going out to Big Grill tonight to celebrate. I assume he’s planning to try out the mechanical bull there.
In the meantime I’m trying to arrange for audio-visual resources for my upcoming classes depending on what’s available with the Instructional Media Services office.

When I was still a student here, up until the first few years I was teaching, there were only a few viewing rooms in the campus, which had to be reserved in advance for use. If the film to be shown is part of the library’s collection, the technician will bring it to the room himself at the appointed time.

Otherwise, the teacher has to give the material to the technician at the start of the class. Of course, this also necessitated making change of room forms for the class so that the attendance checker won’t mark the professor absent. Also, there was no problem with the viewing medium to be used because most of the materials were in VHS, and the few remaining betamax and 8mm resources were in the process of being transferred.

For those who wanted to show computer displays to 40 or so students, there were LCD projectors that can be put on top of overhead projectors for that.

A few years ago, they allotted several televisions and players in locked and wheeled carts for each floor that had classrooms, same as the overhead projectors. It made it possible for more than a handful of classes to have film viewings at the same time. The carts still had to be reserved though, so that the keys and the cable for connecting the VHS player to the TV could be given to the requesting party.

There are still some of those carts being used, but now there are larger televisions that are being used which do not have locked carts. They are just bolted to the cart, with the locked drawer being for the VHS player. The cable still has to be requested for use though.

It also seems that the large auditoriums don’t need those anymore. They have already installed hanging projectors from the ceilings of these halls. The same is true with the computer laboratory rooms, where the teacher needs to demonstrate to the students how exactly to run certain software.

What about VCD and DVD materials then? It seems the school now allows notebooks to be borrowed for use of those, instead of having to acquire separate VCD and DVD players. It also allows the students and teachers to use those for required electronic slide presentation software. These have their own cables and conversion units for displaying in the aforementioned TVs. I’m just not sure exactly how many of those are being circulated for use in the campus.
The department has it’s own TV and VHS player for use in the laboratory rooms. The observatory has its own TV, computer, and overhead projector for use, so I don’t have to reserve for those when I need them, unless the students request for it. That way they save themselves a five-story climb preferring to deal with the bureaucracy in the library. If they fail to reserve the computer display conversion units, the department also still has an LCD projector for that use.

It’s just a matter of avoiding the peak times when the materials are always fully booked, which so far has been during the start, middle and end of the term.