Not everyone that reads this column is a trainer - at least in the "assigned" sense. But you all have responsibility for training yourselves, and many of you are involved in training your fellow officers, either as an actual instructor or as an FTO or a supervisor.

Once upon a time, being a trainer meant actually standing up and teaching a class. We still do a lot of that - us formal trainers, that is - but the law enforcement marketplace has evolved significantly over the past few years. Now, we have many other options for training ourselves and others. Some of those options involve self-run training programs, most typically provided as a CD or DVD disk. The idea is that you get the disk in the mail and simply pop it into your computer drive. Then sit back and absorb the training.

Right.

In other cases, those of us that have actually been trained as instructors receive disks from the various vendors whose systems we teach, or who have trained us as instructors. Those disks usually have PowerPoint files that we're supposed to use to deliver the manufacturer's ordained training. Many times, those PowerPoint files contain embedded videos. All we have to do is fire up the disk, start the PowerPoint file running, and click on the video for our class to watch it.

Right.

Here's the problem: whether you're a supervisor, FTO or department trainer, or just an officer that wants to learn more about your job, you are probably not a computer geek. When the disk doesn't run, or the video won't play, you're just out of luck. If you're really fortunate, there's someone in your department that knows how to fix the problem - but that's often not the case.

Here, then, is a quick and dirty list of things to do, before a training video crisis, in order to keep the train on the tracks.

Avoid Problems Ahead of Time

First things first - make sure that you're actually using the right program. That might sound silly, but this is why it is not: While PowerPoint is the most commonly used program for these types of training presentations, it's not cheap. You may have the most recent version of Microsoft Office (including PowerPoint) on your home PC, but your department might not. Governmental computers are notorious for running old versions of programs. Instead of PowerPoint 2003 or 2007, you may be running PowerPoint 2000, or even PowerPoint 97. If that's the case, you are going to have issues with files and videos that were created in the latest versions of the program.