[HN Gopher] USC professor's DIY online teaching hack to engage s...
___________________________________________________________________
USC professor's DIY online teaching hack to engage students goes
viral (2020)
Author : grzm
Score : 424 points
Date : 2021-06-21 02:16 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.usc.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.usc.edu)
| ClearAndPresent wrote:
| Matt Anderson in 2014:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwreHReBH2A
| kleiba wrote:
| https://thedailyaztec.com/79809/artsandlifestyle/learning-gl...
| bernardv wrote:
| This is great. I can see myself building this for work - quicker
| and more satisfying than buying an over-priced set-up.
| nyc wrote:
| 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).
| mncharity wrote:
| Perhaps use hand tracking[1] to get candidate finger-tip
| positions, to simplify using the FTIR touch blobs for contact
| detection and precision position?
|
| [1] https://viz.mediapipe.dev/demo/hand_tracking Web demo - run
| button is top right.
| oauea wrote:
| Or just add a few special purpose physical buttons to the
| side.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The "hack" is buried for some reason. She built a light board,
| which can show the instructor and "whiteboard" lecture in the
| same video frame. Reversed, so writing is forwards.
| [deleted]
| aarchi wrote:
| (2020)
| dang wrote:
| Added. Thanks!
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| adinisom wrote:
| Lots of info here: https://lightboard.info/
|
| Also lots of places to buy them. Here's one:
| https://www.desktoplightboard.com/product/desktop-lightboard...
| rozab wrote:
| 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/
| [deleted]
| ryanmonroe wrote:
| "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...
| float4 wrote:
| Most people will want visual feedback on the thing they write
| on, e.g. tablet or whiteboard.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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.
| nojito wrote:
| Hanselman made a cool video about using OBS to get a similar
| effect.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oaikJCR6ec
| ape4 wrote:
| Don't forget to tie your hair when using powertools (I'm
| referring to the video)
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| 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.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| 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.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| 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.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| https://lightboard.info/
| Doxin wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| Put a piece of Plexiglas between you and the camera, put a LED
| strip on the edges of the Plexiglas, and mirror the outgoing
| video stream so writing looks the right way (unfortunately your
| face won't), done!
| [deleted]
| mrfusion wrote:
| Do you have to write backwards though?
| archi42 wrote:
| You can mirror the video feed ;-)
| [deleted]
| qznc wrote:
| I find Kellerman's setup more impressive but it surely is more
| complex and costly as well: https://youtu.be/2LaTamAIinc
| tralarpa wrote:
| 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).
| BossingAround wrote:
| As a consumer, I love lightboards. They are much more engaging
| than someone drawing in something like xournal.
|
| That said, as a creator, I'm not shelling out thousands of
| dollars for it. I have my trusty Wacom tablet right here.
| spoonjim wrote:
| FYI: This is a good article about a DIY hack that can be made at
| low cost and with minimal effort. If you want extremely detailed
| information about the state of the art in this space, it's here:
|
| https://lightboard.info/
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Several of the comments here are of the "that's not so special"
| variety.
|
| Let us remember, she's an Economic major, not an engineer. Let us
| also remember, she actually built AND shipped.
| nomilk wrote:
| And it's made all the more important by the lack of software
| allowing economists to graphically demonstrate economic
| concepts on the fly. The best digital substitute is probably a
| graphic design program (like skitch or gimp), and most
| economists would not be competent graphic designers, at least
| not without practice.
| oever wrote:
| Here's another implementation:
|
| https://www.utoday.nl/news/69384/ut-professor-makes-glow-in-...
| jedimastert wrote:
| > Let us also remember, she actually built AND shipped.
|
| It's funny how much further this is than the side projects of
| so many here (myself included)
|
| For me this is one of those 10,000 things. We can either
| dismiss it, or share in the joy of learning something new and
| sharing our own lessons. Teachers learning OBS will be as much
| of a game changer as teachers moving from overheads to
| powerpoint, I think.
|
| Also, I feel like this is super indicative of the gate-keeping
| mentality a lot of IT and tech people have around "not-cutting-
| edge" technology. Even if it is nothing new, let's be the
| resource
| indigochill wrote:
| >Even if it is nothing new, let's be the resource
|
| Talking with non-engineers (particularly friends of mine who
| work in non-profits), I see incomprehensible amounts of
| potential value in just increasing the uptake of "not-so-
| special" tech among people who consider themselves "non-
| technical". That's the point of technology, after all: not
| being fancy unto itself, but actually doing stuff that people
| need, whether that's wheels enabling long-distance
| transportation or lightboards enabling better long-distance
| education.
|
| I'm reminded of this brief but profound interaction in the
| pilot episode of "Halt and Catch Fire":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQLbi4VXYcA
| FoldMorePaper wrote:
| I know it's a bit corny but this scene gives me chills and
| this reference is perfect!
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > Teachers learning OBS will be as much of a game changer as
| teachers moving from overheads to powerpoint, I think.
|
| Just an anecdote but as a chemistry student I remembered
| lessons taught from an overhead far better than those from
| powerpoint. There was a stark contrast between the lower
| division organic chemistry series whose instructors used
| overheads, and the upper division organic chemistry
| mechanisms class whose teacher used slides. Those slides were
| mostly bullets and diagrams, sometimes with crude animations
| which were meant to indicate nucleophilic attack or whatever.
| Just watching the lecturer draw diagrams and arrows and
| listening to them talk was far more helpful, for me.
|
| The lightbox seems much more overhead like in presentation. I
| dig it, and I hope today's college students learn well from
| it.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Economics professor has used open-source tools and DIY skills
| to solve the problem with very high capital efficiency is how I
| see it.
|
| Great example for her students.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| It's a fantastic ingenious hack for, IMO, a model that needs to
| die.
|
| There is no reason to reteach the same class every semester . The
| best minds need to get together and put in N (say 10) semesters
| worth of effort into creating the highest production value
| lectures that all can use until the material fundamentally
| changes. Most of these kinds of lectures have little to no
| interaction which can come at other times and the need to "do it
| live" leads to subpar teaching production.
| mcguire wrote:
| Back in about 1988, I took a required history class from a
| local community college. (To help make up for the fact that it
| took me four semesters to get through the two semester calculus
| course.) The course consisted of...
|
| 1. A high-production-value TV program transmitted on the local
| PBS channel.
|
| 2. In-person mid-term and final tests.
|
| 3. "Teaching assistants" (it was a local community college; I'm
| not sure what their exact status was) with office hours for
| questions.
|
| It...worked. I learned the material, such as it was. As such,
| it was somewhat better than the worst in-person classes I
| experienced.
|
| On the other hand, there was no engagement with the material.
| You read the textbook, watched the TV, and went in to take the
| tests. End of story. There were no asides---having a teacher
| take part of a class to look at some current event from the
| viewpoint of the class, having the teacher answer a completely
| off-the-wall question that leads to a good discussion. There
| were no discussions, in fact. I'm sure some of the students who
| knew the material got together to review for the test or
| something, but honestly, I don't see why. The whole experience
| was aimed at the lowest common denominator with no way for the
| teacher to dial it up for some or all students.
|
| It worked, but it was a worse learning experience than many 500
| students classes that I had from enthusiastic, engaged
| teachers.
|
| I suspect that's why the model hasn't caught on, at least at
| the level of decent schools---people have been saying (and
| attempting) that video would take over from lectures literally
| since Edison invented the movie. (I'm sure it's more
| appropriate for the degree-mills of the world, though.)
| bachmeier wrote:
| > the need to "do it live" leads to subpar teaching production
|
| That heavily depends on the subject and the students. The goal
| of teaching is to teach, not to achieve a high production value
| of a performance in the Hollywood sense.
| avs733 wrote:
| What really needs to die is lectures themselves. They are a
| TERRIBLE method of creating learning. However they are very
| good at creating the perception of learning. That contradiction
| is not surprising, it speaks to how we actually learn, by
| engaging with our reflection and metacognition about attempts
| at things that end in errors.
| tapatio wrote:
| Yes, ideally each student would have their own teacher/tutor
| and learn by trial and error. In fact, that's what the very
| wealthy do.
| avs733 wrote:
| Eh...peer learning is nearly as effective, especially when
| the choice is between a peer and a teacher who holds
| beliefs about education based in a transmission model of
| education
| gnicholas wrote:
| Huh it looks like she horizontally mirrors the camera so that the
| writing appears forwards not backwards. At first I thought she
| might have been writing in reverse, which would be doable on
| simple graphs but harder with more words. Later shots show her
| writing on-camera, forwards from her perspective.
| boulos wrote:
| Yeah, she uses OBS to flip the recording (she mentions "in
| software" in the video in the tweet, and the interview mentions
| OBS)
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| In the past century, glass chalkboards and reverse writing were
| actually used in the military, mainly in air defense. Specially
| trained writers were putting objects scanned by radars on the
| board with coordinates and related info, while officers were
| reading them from the other side.
| chasingthewind wrote:
| My late grandfather was a Radarman in WWII and learned to do
| this.
| mlok wrote:
| Leonardo Da Vinci used to write backwards in his notebooks,
| in order for his ideas and secrets not to be stolen.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| As a left handed person, it's pretty easy for me to write
| backwards. It feels like something in my brain wants the
| letters and words to go that way, even though I never
| practice.
| dmurray wrote:
| A right handed person can write in reverse with their
| left hand without much practice, by holding a pen in each
| hand, pretending to write with their right and mirroring
| the hand movements. It's even easier if you just "write"
| with your finger, eg on a foggy mirror, rather than
| holding a pen. The scripts we use are definitely
| optimized for right handed writing.
| guard0g wrote:
| It's a functionallity in zoom, I believe.
| evanb wrote:
| That only mirrors what you see when you look at yourself---it
| doesn't flip what everybody else sees.
| guard0g wrote:
| There's a "mirror my video" setting.
| https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2020/04/how-to-reverse-
| mir...
| evanb wrote:
| Agreed that the setting exists; disagree about what it
| does.
|
| What that option toggles what _you_ see when you look at
| yourself. The audience _always_ sees the unmirrored
| video.
|
| This is not clearly explained in the documentation.
| However, it is mentioned here
|
| https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/204065759-Zoom-
| Roo...
|
| for example, where they say of the option "Note: You can
| tap the Enable video mirroring option if you want a
| mirror effect for your own video display (where the
| display of your own Zoom Room looks like a mirror)."
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I agree with you, this feature always does the same
| thing in everything (every video conferencing app uses it
| to show you yourself). The reason is that you're used to
| seeing yourself in the mirror, and your image would look
| weird to you if it weren't mirrored.
|
| It would also look weird to everyone _else_ if it _were_
| , so they see your normal image.
| reactspa wrote:
| This is not new. It's been around for a while. E.g.:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5t6BTQYRU
| shkkmo wrote:
| Neither She nor the article claims it is new. The nifty part is
| the DIY aspect that makes this decade old technology
| potentially widwly accessible for teachers. Even that isn't
| new, but spreading the knowledge of the tool and how to make is
| accessible is still highly valuable.
| yftsui wrote:
| 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
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| I would consider top 10 on HN front page to be "going viral."
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| 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".
| iamben wrote:
| I suppose it depends on what you're used to? From my own
| (and other people's) experiences, you can have a project
| with a few hundred site visits - get towards the top of HN,
| and you can have 100k visits over the next few days.
|
| A good enough project on HN tends to get coverage
| elsewhere, a lot of Tweets etc etc.
| saagarjha wrote:
| TIL I've gone viral!
| beowulfey wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I would imagine it is getting popular
| now due to a sudden increase in the number of people needing to
| do digital lessons.
|
| FWIW, I had never seen your video nor heard of a lightboard
| prior to this HN post, so I would say viral is pretty on point.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| djmips wrote:
| Things can go viral long after they are invented. And they can
| go viral more than once. Just like a real virus!
| OJFord wrote:
| The same reason things describe themselves as One Weird Trick,
| or N Unbelievably Adjective Things, claim that The Internet
| Cannot Handle them, etc. very quickly ad nauseam.
|
| I can't stand it, won't click them, but clearly I'm abnormal
| and it works, most people love it (or have a 'FOMO' on it) and
| click them.
| ianbooker wrote:
| 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..
| spot5010 wrote:
| Any link to a tutorial on how to set this up? Thanks!
| technics256 wrote:
| Which drawing app do you use?
| ianbooker wrote:
| Procreate. With the Pencil it is quite smooth and can mimic
| ballpens or pencil drawings.
| jedimastert wrote:
| OBS is going to be such a game changer for anyone in education,
| I feel like it's going to be as big of a leap from over heads
| to power point
| dmurray wrote:
| Only until the administrators notice and mandate some
| terrible buggy, expensive proprietary solution instead.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Have some sympathy for those administrators please. The
| backhanders on OBS are non-existent!
| [deleted]
| totetsu wrote:
| Just the other day I was following some complicated tutorial
| for getting blackmagic's atem mini pro hdmi capture/mixer board
| to work in Wine in Ubuntu 20.04 .. I finally gave up and tried
| decided to play around with a webcam in obs instead. There to
| my surprise, OBS was listing the ATEM's capture input out of
| the box no wine required, with no config as a video source!
| tsumnia wrote:
| Same! I don't do anything as elaborate as the article, but I
| use a combination of OBS, PowerPoint, GIMP, IDEs, and a cheap
| Wacom tablet to demonstrate all the concepts for my classes.
|
| The "Khan Academy"-style drawing I think really helps keep
| learning online casual and conversational in a way just
| presenting slides doesn't.
| evanb wrote:
| 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.
| Tepix wrote:
| Using Zoom with OBS (virtual camera) works fine for me.
| ta988 wrote:
| In some cases it looked fine for me but for the other
| persons it looked really ugly. Make sure you use the v"2nd
| camera mode" in screen sharing options of zoom. Do not do
| it as your own camera or it will look really bad. On Linux,
| I have to start zoom after Obs and the virtual camera for
| all that to work properly.
| ianbooker wrote:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-06-21 23:01 UTC)