Earlier this month I spent a day at Mantua Elementary in Fairfax County – a wonderful neighborhood school in a wooded, older and quieter section of bustling Northern Virginia. My presentation needs are simple because I travel with my own overhead projector, but Mantua’s library was tricked out! There was a digital projector for me, several computer stations and even a scanner (the tech I use all the time to get my hand-drawings into a digital form). It was tantalizing (I’ve used whiteboards at schools and shown my PowerPoint to civics groups) but I stuck with my old overhead because it allows me to work the magic of drawing and still face my audience.

The funniest tech interaction was between me and the signers who came to two of my four sessions. The school has several hearing-impaired students, one who needed me to wear a mike so he could hear. It all went well – I asked the hearing-impaired students some questions directly as I did my Phil Donahue routine in and around the audience. But the poor signers had to figure out what to do with my active style. I literally walked circles around one signer. The other one decided to trail me when I went to the back of the audience for one questioner, and she and I got back and forth just fine.

And the snowfall that day gaveth and tooketh tech away: school wasn’t cancelled, but I spent too long talking to teachers after my presentations and got stuck behind the afternoon bus line. A PT Cruiser’s car wheels won’t get me around big buses in the snow! So I just stayed in the library – where some of my earlier audience members discovered me and gathered around my Mac laptop to see me coloring one of my new cartoons. That was a fun day!!

Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester Comix, Fairfax County, Mantua Elementary, snow day

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Author's Purpose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.