In Part I of this series, I described how I’ve adapted the traditional rehearsal slide format to better suite our band room and how I would prefer to display information.

In Part II, I’ll show you how the changes to the rehearsal slide format have enabled me to reap the benefits of those format changes, while stepping away from the computer.

the band room landscape

In the picture to the right, you can see the physical relationship of the laptop to the conductor’s podium. This arrangement is inconvenient considering, with the new rehearsal slide format, I need to click links in the slide deck to change slides.

Sure, we could possibly change the layout of the front of the band room. But the layout works well for the flow of the room.

Or, we could look into products like Wenger manufactures to provide a place for the laptop right at the podium. In our current setup, this kind of option would take up too much space.

What if the slide deck could be controlled from the podium wirelessly?

Turns out, it can. And, you can likely use the tech already at hand with some minor investments.

Option 1: Use a Presentation Remote

The drop-dead simplest way to control the rehearsal slide deck remotely is to use presentation remote. There are a wide range of these devices, in various sizes, shapes, and features. They connect to your laptop via Bluetooth or their own USB receivers.

I keep the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer handy, which I found in this iMore round-up of the best presentation remotes. (Don’t let the article title fool you: these remotes are not particular to Mac or PC.) The features I find compelling with this remote are:

rechargeable via USB
audio controls
number pad to quickly access specific slides
volume control
laser pointer

I got it for around $45 on Amazon.

As nice as it is, this is my backup option. My preferred method of controlling the rehearsal slides from the podium involves a tablet and a piece of software.

Option 2: Meet AirServer

My go-to setup involves presenting from an iPad to a MacBook Pro, using a small piece of software called AirServer running on the MacBook Pro.

AirServer is a “universal mirroring receiver”, which means it affords a wide assortment of devices the ability to mirror their screen to a computer — laptop or desktop, Mac or Windows PC. The computer is usually then connected to a projector, but this is not a requirement to run the software.

Using the proprietary terms, AirServer makes the computer appear as an AirPlay receiver for macOS and iOS devices, and as a Google Cast receiver Android/Chromebook devices.

So, this example can work well with other devices besides Apple hardware.

AirServer offers a 14-day trial, and Educational Licenses starting at $11.99 for a single user, with price breaks for more than 10 licenses.

How It All Works

Once AirServer is running on the laptop, and the laptop is connected to a projector, use the screen mirroring menu in the iPad’s Control Center to select my laptop as the receiver for the iPad screen.

*use the screen mirroring menu to select your laptop*

Then, start the Google Slide presentation, selecting the option to present on an external display.

Now that the presentation is active, the links to slides within the deck are presented as a menu in the presenter view.

*from your tablet, tap the links to move between slides in the deck*

The goal of all of this tech is to make it easier to move quickly between different rehearsal goals, displaying more detailed information, more easily readable for all of the students in our band room.

I hope you find this useful!

Have your own rehearsal slide hack? Share it on the OSOG Facebook page! We’d like to learn from your creativity!