I taught last Sunday at Redwood Kids. First service the PowerPoint didn’t work, so it was hard keeping the kid’s attention. I decided to keep going with the teaching even though I was having technical difficulties; also my mic wasn’t working.
Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with technical problems when you’re speaking?
I resolved to just keep going and make the best of what I have. I figured it would probably be a good idea if more of us in Redwood Kids learn about the sound system we’re using so that we can fix problems when the happen. It seems as though things get changed around during the week–I would imagine from Tribe.
During the second service when my PowerPoint was finally working, I noticed it makes a huge difference in keeping the kids attention, and drawing them into the story. I also noticed tonight at Plunge, Nathan used video backdrops in his slides. I wonder if they might be useful for teaching to kids.
I’m trying to figure out what is the best way to put a presentation together. Should I use PowerPoint, MediaShout, or Keynote? I figured this week that I would save time setting up in the morning if I did everything in PowerPoint, but that created two issues: one being compatibility problems when moving my presentation from Mac to PC; the other was technical in trying to insure that the person in the back knows how to start and use the presentation. The advantage of using MediaShout is that the person in the back will always know how to use it. The disadvantage is the time needed to setup the presentation in the morning. The other possibility I just thought of on Sunday was using Keynote; Henry the new children’s pastor is an iBook user and has a MiniDV-to-RCA adapter which we could use to plug into the switchbox. This way I could just run everything off of my PowerBook.
I realized as I keep teaching that I’m always learning, learning how to put a teaching together, learning how to write what I want to say, learning how to deal with technical stuff, learning about what works and what doesn’t.
Anyway, things should be interesting with Henry. It was funny chatting with him on Sunday; I think we’ll get along quite easily. He’s a Mac user with a science background. Started out with a science degree, and then ended up in ministry.
I wonder if something like that will happen to me later on in life.
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