The pandemic era of virtual teaching is challenging our ability to connect with the audience. Standard technologies of teaching with a tablet or slides reduce you, the presenter, to a tiny avatar in the corner of the screen. This makes it challenging to maintain a face-to-face connection with your audience. If only there were a way to make the virtual setting feel less...virtual. The good news is that $200 buys you the green-screen studio: lights, a green backdrop, and a microphone that, with a little bit of free software magic, allow you to walk virtually in front of your slides while maintaining eye contact with your audience, just like weather people do on TV. For another $100, you can build a DIY lightboard, which is basically a transparent whiteboard. You write on it using glow-in-the-dark markers while looking directly through it into the camera. You can even "project” plots and movies onto the lightboard alongside your writing. Some students have reported that the lightboard technique provided them with a better learning experience than a regular, in-person classroom. Here, I showcase both the green screen and lightboard technologies and share my experience using these creative solutions for teaching online.
Be sure to join the Office Hours discussion for this video on Thursday morning. Find more information on that session here: https://teachx21.sched.com/event/j8mt
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