The students were deliciously amused as the blinds fell. . . but the screen rose — or else the video was out-of-focus, or the sound intermittent, or worse.

How I hoped to orchestrate the class! Instead, the room orchestrated me, and the technology orchestrated the room. Are lecture halls more vulnerable to the lure of technology, the better (we hope) to try to reclaim some of the intellectual focus inevitably lost when there is too much space? —Terry Caesar —A Room and a View (Inside Higher Ed)