Your students have just finished high school and college and now they're sat in your lecture theater to start their university life. Its not just life away from home they've got to get used to it's a whole new way of learning too. They're going to have to adapt to how your information is presented to them, suddenly they are sat in a tiered lecture theater, surrounded by up to a couple of hundred more students than they're used to so the first thing that needs to be looked at is how are they going to see and hear your lecture and the audio visual equipment you're using.
A good quality projector would be the best place to start, but with the market full of so many makes and models all insisting they're the best, you need to know a bit about them to make an informed decision. LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors send the light through a prism to three separate LCD glass panels, red, green, and blue, the light is then sent through to the projector lens and allows the image to be displayed. DLP (digital light processing) projectors use a DMD (digital mirror device) chip which over 1 million tiny mirrors are arranged as a grid. DLP projectors are a new technology so they offer a slightly better image whereas the LCD projectors will be a little easier on the budget.
Now you've got your projector you're going to need a screen to display the image on. This image is going to need to be just as clear at the back of the lecture theater as it is down the front. The majority of the most suitable technology is going to fall into two categories, LCD screens or plasma screens. Again, the LCD works by filtering the light through the liquid crystals, the plasma screens basically work by using the gas in cells trapped between two panels of glass to release light. You will generally get a better image with a plasma screen as the quality of the image is not compromised if the screen is being viewed from an angle, but it will be a lot heavier and almost impossible to repair if the glass gets damaged. An LCD may not have the resolution a plasma screen can achieve, but they will generally use less energy.
Your students can now see what you've got to say, but now you need to make sure they can hear you too. Screaming your lecture at the room is only going to deafen the students at the front and cost you your voice. This is something that requires quite a bit of planning, if you're going to use speakers you will need to ensure they're placed at the right distance apart and so that every student in the room can hear them comfortably. If your speakers don't have amplifiers built in, your room is going to need these too otherwise your speakers are not going to work, the amplifier will tell your speakers how much current or voltage needs to be sent through. Then you've got to consider your microphone, with a choice of ceiling mounted, hand held or desk top mounted you'll need to ensure it's adapted to your teaching style, if you like to walk between your students a desk top mounted microphone may not be practical.
Once you've decided what equipment is going to suit your lecture theater, you need to ensure it's all brought together in the most efficient way possible, there's no point in having a lecture theater full of state of the art AV technology if you cant access and use it at the flick or a switch. Lecterns can be made from a whole host of materials and come in an array of different shapes and sizes to ensure they fit into your teaching room. From the lectern you can control just about anything in the lecture theater, from the lights to the projector to the sound, ensuring everything can be controlled with just a few simple buttons.
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