Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.usc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 108 posts

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

#51

Post by IshKebab »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #48

“It was under $60 at the hardware store” So this isn’t actually any cheaper than what I would think of as the standard solution, which is to buy A drawing tablet (which also conveniently doesn’t take up a ton of space in your living area) Name brand (Wacom) drawing tablet for $60: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07S1RR3FR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_gl...

A Wacom tablet is nowhere near as good as this. Harder to draw on, you can't easily point to things, more tedious to select different colours etc.

I think the actual easy solution is an overhead camera and pens and paper. Doesn't look as cool obviously.

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

#52

Post by float4 »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #48

“It was under $60 at the hardware store” So this isn’t actually any cheaper than what I would think of as the standard solution, which is to buy A drawing tablet (which also conveniently doesn’t take up a ton of space in your living area) Name brand (Wacom) drawing tablet for $60: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07S1RR3FR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_gl...

Most people will want visual feedback on the thing they write on, e.g. tablet or whiteboard.

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

#53

Post by nyc »

The principle behind why the writing glows (i.e., totally internally reflected light from the LEDs in the plexiglass getting scattered by the ink) is also how some of the earlier multi-touch systems worked (like the one in Jeff Han's 2006 TED talk). So, with the right software, it might be possible to convert one of these DIY lightboards to support input (maybe to change slides or something).

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

#54

Post by rozab »

adinisom wrote: post #34
forrestthewoods wrote: post #9

Whoa this is awesome. I would like to buy/build one of these for my home office? What's the best guide or best pre-built? Honestly I'd rather just throw money at someone whose built one for me. But either way is fine.

Lots of info here: https://lightboard.info/ Also lots of places to buy them. Here's one: https://www.desktoplightboard.com/product/desktop-lightboard...

The lightboard.info site has instructions for building an $8k professional setup, using tempered glass etc. It does explain the mechanism of the lightboard (frustrated total internal reflection), but otherwise doesn't seem very useful for DIYers.

Instructables is the goto site for this sort of thing, I found these instructions for building a small one for under $100: https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Lightboard/

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

#55

Post by ianbooker »

evanb wrote: post #20
ianbooker wrote: post #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..

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.

Yes. Zoom is fine, you can either up the resolution for the "speaker view" in your account preferences (maybe just in the paid version), or even better: Use the screen share feature and under "advanced" you can share a second camera, or in this case: the virtual OBS camera. This will usually not be compressed as hard as the speaker views.

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

#56

Post by bellyfullofbac »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #11

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.

And the title is click-bait. Hint, for it to not be a click-bait, it should state what the hack is (in this case: "lightboard"), not make people have to read the damned article to find out what it is. In this case it should be something like: "USC professor's DIY lightboard for online teaching to engage students goes viral"

The article writer has a a degree in (print) journalism, do they teach this sort of crap in journalism school nowadays?

> Eric Lindberg is the associate editor for features at USC University Communications. He is a USC graduate with a degree in print journalism.

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

#60

Post by tralarpa »

Do people like lightboards? You have to be careful what you wear, how you stand, how you move etc. so that you don't cover what you have written (see the video by the inexperienced USC professor where she wears a white shirt). As a result, most of the time you can only use a small part of the screen, like here: https://youtu.be/6I48J7Lf4_Y?t=173 Bad for people who are watching your videos on a small screen (phone, old tablet,...).

Or you use low lighting and then walk behind the board, like here: https://youtu.be/6I48J7Lf4_Y?t=266 Which is a bit annoying because then you have things (i.e. you) moving in the background all the time. Not good for visually impaired audience members and people with low-bandwidth connections.

I will keep my $50 drawing tablet, although I have to admit that it's much easier with a lightboard to point to things (on the other hand, with a drawing tablet, you can just circle the word that you want to draw the audience's attention to and then undo it when you continue).

Post reply on HN