I'm starting to wonder about setups for remote meetings and if that is a big part of the problem. Like most colleges, we were thrown in the deep end with distance learning. We've done distance learning in a single classroom that is well equipped for twenty years, but never from a teacher's home.
For one class, a bead-work class, we used a camera attached to a flexible gooseneck and a switcher from Blackmagic Design[1] to go between normal camera and the bead camera. It worked well and got me thinking about how we do our home setups. I think the laptop webcam with a small screen is the real problem. It just isn't the best placement. I watched my nephew and niece do remote classes on a Chromebook and that really seemed uncomfortable. It feels like your looking at a room through a porthole.
I am starting to think that hardware needs to be improved, and the whiteboard needs to become an actual surface in your office with remote updating. Multiple cameras is a winner and a big screen to view the video call seems to work really well.
I get the feeling that if I ever go back out into the mainstream workforce doing remote work, I will invest in a home production setup with multiple cameras and a switcher with overhead (documents) and camera pointed at a whiteboard.
Shared whiteboards have been a thing for a long time in the corporate world. These days you don’t even really need a specialized device - Teams, for example, has the functionality built in so all you need is a large screen (although input without a touchscreen kind of sucks)
It’s basically unusable without a touchscreen but really you need a stylus on the touchscreen to write notes, draw shapes, etc. Even then, if the screen is 12 inches diagonal or less, it can be really cramped and hard to manage the board content, especially when it’s a collaborative board.
For one class, a bead-work class, we used a camera attached to a flexible gooseneck and a switcher from Blackmagic Design[1] to go between normal camera and the bead camera. It worked well and got me thinking about how we do our home setups. I think the laptop webcam with a small screen is the real problem. It just isn't the best placement. I watched my nephew and niece do remote classes on a Chromebook and that really seemed uncomfortable. It feels like your looking at a room through a porthole.
I am starting to think that hardware needs to be improved, and the whiteboard needs to become an actual surface in your office with remote updating. Multiple cameras is a winner and a big screen to view the video call seems to work really well.
I get the feeling that if I ever go back out into the mainstream workforce doing remote work, I will invest in a home production setup with multiple cameras and a switcher with overhead (documents) and camera pointed at a whiteboard.
1) https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini