Thursday Night's Lesson ... Successes and Failures Screen Sharing I wanted to share a lengthy Powerpoint presentation on multiple computers simultaneously. Wednesday I tried LogMeIn's http://join.me/ site. It was incredibly simple to use, but I couldn't get it to work on some computers. On Thursday I went in early to the Family History Center and tried Join.me, only to find that it still would not work on some computers, including one where it had worked perfectly the day before! This led me to try a different free product, ScreenStream http://screen-stream.en.softonic.com/ I installed this software and found it too confusing. Next I tried the free version of YuuGuu http://www.yuuguu.com/home Like ScreenStream, their software needed to be installed on the hosting computer, but like Join.me it was very simple to use. Better yet, it worked on all of the client computers. My presentation went off without a hitch! I plan to use it for live demos in the future. This is much better than using a projector, because the students can sit at the computers. (And I don't need to arrange access to a different room with a projector and screen.) Certificate Problems I was teaching a lesson on the Online Portal that gives FHCs access to certain commercial databases for free. Validation that you are accessing the sites from an official Family History Center computer depends upon a security certificate installed on the individual computer. After the lesson, the students were invited to use the Online Portal for their own research. We ended up having to re-install the certificates twice on two of the computers. In the meantime we had some frustrated students ... so that part did not go as smoothly as planned. I should have done a trial run on each of the computers before the class, but things had been working perfectly the previous time I used the Online Portal.