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USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

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Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#12
OBS is really the big enabler in (my) online teaching at the moment. I use an IPad with a drawing app, I draw on a predefined colored canvas and overlay it in OBS with a chromakey filter. If that is available to you, it is even cheaper. But then again, I am looking slightly down while writing..

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#13

What she did is really cool - the article though sucks. I want to know how she did this. But apart from the video talking about "a few LEDs" there isn't much to go on.

I think it’s simply a piece of glass with an LED strip along the bottom edge (and a frame). So the light shines up through the glass and illuminates the markers.

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#14

What she did is really cool - the article though sucks. I want to know how she did this. But apart from the video talking about "a few LEDs" there isn't much to go on.

Fairly sure it's a piece of plexiglass with a LED strip around the edges. Normally the light would more or less bounce around inside the glass or escape to light up the environment. If you write on it the light hits the writing instead, giving it this cool-looking glow.

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#15

OBS is really the big enabler in (my) online teaching at the moment. I use an IPad with a drawing app, I draw on a predefined colored canvas and overlay it in OBS with a chromakey filter. If that is available to you, it is even cheaper. But then again, I am looking slightly down while writing..

Which drawing app do you use?

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#17
post #5

Not sure why this title has "goes viral", it is nothing new. Almost 8 years ago, Dr. Jules White explained a simpler setup(at least IMO as less software) in very detail with a Mirror: Building a Low-cost Lightboard for Video Lectures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYwXOLU4TKk

I would consider top 10 on HN front page to be "going viral."

That seems like a pretty low bar. When I think viral I don't think, "gets to the top 10 submissions of a niche forum".

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#18

OBS is really the big enabler in (my) online teaching at the moment. I use an IPad with a drawing app, I draw on a predefined colored canvas and overlay it in OBS with a chromakey filter. If that is available to you, it is even cheaper. But then again, I am looking slightly down while writing..

Which drawing app do you use?

Procreate. With the Pencil it is quite smooth and can mimic ballpens or pencil drawings.

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#19
post #5

Not sure why this title has "goes viral", it is nothing new. Almost 8 years ago, Dr. Jules White explained a simpler setup(at least IMO as less software) in very detail with a Mirror: Building a Low-cost Lightboard for Video Lectures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYwXOLU4TKk

There were rooms you could rent at my undergrad in the library that had a built in light board specifically for recording these sorts of lecture videos.

Re: USC professor’s DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes viral (2020)

#20

OBS is really the big enabler in (my) online teaching at the moment. I use an IPad with a drawing app, I draw on a predefined colored canvas and overlay it in OBS with a chromakey filter. If that is available to you, it is even cheaper. But then again, I am looking slightly down while writing..

Were you using Zoom? I had a lot of trouble using either the OBS virtual camera or sharing the composition window---what was transmitted was either potato quality or the video lagged very far behind.

After a LOT of debugging, I'm convinced it was due to Zoom bandwidth throttling, which I was unable to get waived.

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