Suddenly Online Teaching- how to make an overhead document camera

Like most college educators, I have found myself suddenly online teaching. This series will hopefully help other educators, or new home office users, who have similarly found themselves in the same position, to be helpful.

Five quick tips!

1. Your IP address will change so each day that you log in with the second webcam, you will need to enter the new address. It is at the bottom of the camera screen.

2. You will need to make the same adjustments each time you log on. 

3. Do not spend time locating extra lighting, the system will auto-correct for lighting.

4. You do not need to have a SIM card in the phone if you have it connected to your wifi.

5. This is fiddly, just know that going in and be prepared to fiddle. Get it together before class "starts."

The back story:

As an interior design instructor, I need to demo drawing techniques live so that I can answer questions or repeat a technique again. Thus, I needed an overhead camera than integrated with my laptop so that I could "share my screen." I do not have a separate webcam from my laptop, nor did I want to burden my college when they have so many irons in the fire with everyone all of the suddenly teaching online.

So, I had to get creative.

 The idea:

I thought that I could just plug in my cellphone and use the camera, but my iPhone and Surface Pro do not talk to each other. So, I looked on the web for a solution (article from here) and it was to take an old cell phone that is the same type of operating system as the laptop. On a quest for an old phone at home, I found my 7-10-year-old android cell phone. It still charged up and I had a cable.

I was cooking!

The plan: 

You will need to get the cell phone camera to broadcast on your laptop and from a height above the workspace.

I installed IP Webcam for Android app on my phone and followed the online instructions to create the linkage (found here). Then, I entered my IP address from the phone in my browser. The web address can be found at the bottom of the cell phone screen when the app is running.

And magically on my computer screen came the image on the camera. I couldn't be more proud of myself. But that was only half the solution. I still needed to get in to float over my work table.

The equipment:

cellphone
charging cable
something for height above the table surface

When I hatched the plan to do this about a week ago, I ordered a "selfie ring with camera holder" from Amazon. The key to this product was that all the parts articulated so that I could set the height and turn the phone holder parallel to the tabletop.

This allows me to have an effective, though rather crude overhead camera that connects to my laptop that I can demo live drawing techniques with my student through screen sharing.

So, what if you do not have a selfie ring? You can still float the camera above the table with a different method. You might have a camera tripod with a cellphone holder. You could use a lightweight table or child's chair to attach the cell phone to and place the table above the surface. The IP webcam app will zoom the image for you, so distance is not as important as you might think.

If you have one of those new "C-tables", that would work very well because you can snuggle the table closer to the drawing surface. The one to right is from West Elm (found here). With this table, you could simply lay your phone on the table with the camera over the end and pointed down!

Because my cell phone is an old gal, I need to keep it plugged in and charging. So for me, the charging cord is a must. But if your phone holds a better charge, you will not need to do this.

Now, I am able to DUAL webcam with the zoom meeting. One camera of my face on the laptop camera and one that I can flip to on the laptop that allows me to "share my screen" and see the drawings. 

I hope you and your family are well, your students are happy and staying away from people and that you teaching is superb!

Please check out my other Suddenly Online Teaching series for more ideas coming this week.