LCD Projectors

Our school has QEIA (I think that is the "acronym of the day") money. With this money we have hired a math coach for the math department because apparently we need help. I'm not against this per se, but perhaps getting some more input from the teachers of the math department, better buy-in, etc. would have made this process less painful. Of course, having our principal tell us our scores were abysmal and so we need a coach was not all that helpful. Honestly, for someone who should know how to communicate sometimes I have to wonder.

Anyway, I digress. Our math coach has managed to get our department some nice new cool toys - I got some software and some other things I ordered (such as a geometry solids set, which was cool) and just recently we got enough LCD projectors for the whole department. So, we have a meeting and the LCD projectors are handed out.

The next day in the lunchroom a conversation ensues about how to use the LCD projector. I explain that it projects what is on your computer screen, so of course, you have to have something to project (website, document, power point, etc.) One teacher complains that the Power Points included with our current text adoption do not work on our computers (true - the Power Points are archaic, and will freeze the computers) and then concludes that "the LCD projector is useless." Ummm... no. What is useless is the Power Points from the associated materials - but there are a LOT of other resources out there, interactive screens, other Power Points, build your own lessons, etc. So, then I get "Well, then it doesn't WORK!" and "I have to build my own lessons?" One teacher wants it to project a page from the book, but unfortunately that is a document camera - not an LCD projector. Although we do have CD's that have the book pages. So, what I get is insistence that the LCD projector isn't the right thing because it:

(a) doesn't magically provide a lesson.
(b) you actually have to connect it to *gasp* your computer to have it do anything.
(c) you have to have something for it to project.

Apparently - their idea of an LCD projector is that you turn it on and a lesson appears. You don't have to connect it, or have anything for it to actually project - because it's supposed to do that All By Itself.

Just shoot me now.