This page remains (for now) just an outline, but feel free to check out a more fleshed-out list of some gear recommendations.

This is a page to collect some of my thoughts and recommendations about technology you can use to teach from home. By “teach,” I mean both teaching students enrolled in a class, and presenting to participants in a research seminar. Those are my focus only because in my job I teach college students and present research, but hopefully some of this is useful for other purposes too—like online meetings and socializing.

Four quick caveats; three are quick and numbered, while the last one is most important so gets its own paragraph:

1. This is a work in progress. I know more than I’ve written up, but I’m also learning more all the time.
2. I am not trained in this, and I am not an expert. (My professional expertise touches financial and labor economics.) There are many real experts, from whom I’ve learned a lot and you should too. But I think there are also things you can learn from me, which is why I’m putting this page together. Caveat lector.
3. This page includes affiliate links which—if you click on them and make purchases—earn me a little bit of money. No one’s (yet) offered me any discounted products or sponsorships of any kind, but I acknowledge the risk that these affiliate risks affect my incentives to recommend expensive products. Offsetting that, I am a cheapskate who has bought most of this stuff, and bought all of that out of my own pocket (usually unreimbursed by college funds). Caveat emptor.

Here’s the most important caution: I suspect that good technology doesn’t mean good teaching, whatever “good” teaching even means. (And whatever it means, the best teachers are probably more focused on learning than teaching, anyway.) This page is about teaching technology not because technology is so important, but because I believe it‘s important enough to be worth thinking about. As I mentioned above, I‘m not an expert, but here are some reasons I think you should consider improving your teaching technology:

• Direct effects
  • Student engagement
  • Student understanding
  • Credibility
• Indirect effects
  • Ability to focus on teaching
  • Signalling
  • Pride of craft

First Questions

• Synchronous vs. asynchronous
• Presentation vs. interaction

Implications for meeting, streaming, recording; bandwidth, latency

Basics

Per Alex Lindsay: Focus on internet, then audio, then lighting, then camera, then background

Software

Microphones

• Cardioid vs. omnidirectional
• Condenser vs. dynamic
• USB vs. XLR
• Positioning
• Mic technique
• Room treatment

Recommendation: Samson Q2U (Not currently available)

Headphones/speakers

Cameras

Recommendation: Razer Kiyo, Razer Kiyo (alt)

Monitors

Desk arrangement

Intermediate Topics

Screen sharing

Boarding

Intermediate video

Backgrounds

• Real backgrounds
• Virtual backgrounds

Lighting

• Sunlight
  • Positioning
  • Reflectors
• Artificial lighting

Advanced Topics

Multiple PCs

Recording

• Video
  • Conversion incl. Handbrake
• Multitrack audio

Advanced audio

• Noise and other filters
• Desktop audio capture

Advanced video

• ATEM Mini

Capture cards

NDI

• Skype

Switching

Compositing

Keying

• Greenscreens
• Masks

Bumpers, titles, captions

Multichannel

• Youtube Live, Periscope, Twitch
• Youtube, Twitter, LMS uploads
• Restream

Teleprompters

Controllers

• Streamdeck (including Companion)
• MIDI?

Polling software

Guest speakers

iOS and Airplay

Other tools

• Flipgrid
• Icebreaker Video
• Mentimeter
• Notability
• ZoomOSC