====== E-teaching ======= The problem of using a laptop and a beamer to give classroom lessons my be solved by considering two different aspects: * the software used to draw the beamer window, and * the device(s) used to support hadwriting. In case you want to make available an audio or audio/video record of you lessons, you need to consider also another aspect: * the hw/sw used to record and produce audio and video. Let's consider the three aspects separately. ==== Blackboard software ==== The blackboard software is the software supporting the presentation of handwritten, ASCII or picture (cut&paste) material on the screen. Two categories of software must be considered: * sw displaying the laptop/pc/tablet screen in mirror mode on the beamer, and * sw supporting different views on beamer and laptop screen. The former kind of software basically oblige you to show everything you do on the screen to the students, including writing tools setup (e.g. changing pen size or color), window switching to capture material to be shown, etc. Furthermore the dimensions of the beamer "balckboard" coincide with the dimensions of your screen and you are in general obliged to pack material in tight ways on the screen to avoid changing page too frequently, which is not a good strategy for the lesson and for the student attention. The latter kind of software allows you to operate on the laptop screen at a different resolution w.r.t. the one used on the beamer, and in general show on the beamer only the final output of what you draw/write/paste on the laptop screen. Sample software only working in "mirror mode": * [[http://xournal.sourceforge.net/|xournal]] (Linux, Mac OS X?, open source) * Journal (Windows, comes with standard Windows distribution) * [[http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal.htm|jarnal]] (Linux, Mac OS , open source) Sample software supporting dual screen mode: * [[http://open-sankore.org/|Sankorè]] (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, open source) * Jarnal extension by Zeno Grandi, available on this [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/wiki/doku.php?id=teachingtools|website]] All the software packages listed above support writing the blackboard contents on the disk in PDF. Most of them support the usage of PDFs as background, and therefore support annotation of slides prepared with other tools. ==== Input devices ==== Different input devices may be used to input hadwriting into the blackboard software. I personally experimented: * Wacom style USB tablet devices (cost in the range of 50-100€) * USB Digital Pen (cost in the range of 100€) * Interactive (Pen) Screens (cost in the range of 1000-2000€) === USB tablet devices === These are cheap, very robust, easy to transport (200g) and work with any operating system. As the tablet are passive devices, you must "write" on the device and look at the results on the screen, which initially requires a little bit of practice. Excellent results at the end. See [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/Tools/usb-tablet.mov|this video]].

=== Interactive (Pen) Screens === These are quite expensive devices that look like a flat monitor and connect to both Laptop (video and USB) and beamer (video). The beamer shows what is shown on the interactive screen, and the interactive screen shows what's sent by the laptop (therefore either the same screen (mirror mode) or a different one (dual mode)). The usb connection sends to the laptop "pointer" status. The pointer may be moved on the interactive screen with a pen device. See [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/Tools/interactive-video.mov|this video]] (the laptop uses mirror mode, what you see on the laptop screen and on the interactive pen video is also shown on the beamer).

=== Digital Pen === These are cheap and very light devices, with a small device to be connected to the USB port on the laptop anc clipped on top of an A4 page and a pen used to write on the page. The writing is delivered to the laptop either as mouse events or captured by specific software. The pen usually works on batteries, while the receiving device works on internal batteries re-charged via USB. (video in preparation). ==== Hw/Sw to capture audio/video ==== Working with a laptop, you usually have available the laptop front camera and the laptop mic to record video and audio. However, you are not usually interested in recording your face and voice, but rather you voice and what's going on on the screen. Different screen capture programs are available, depending on the operating system used. Under Linux, I use a combination of tools that include * [[http://eca.cx/ecasound/|ecasound]] or [[http://audacity.sourceforge.net/?lang=it|Audacity]] to record lesson audio from Laptop internal mic or from an external mic. Both tools run also on Mac OS X and Audacity is available also for Windows. * [[http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php|gtk-recordMyDesktop]] or a script I wrote (available at [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/wiki/doku.php?id=teachingtools|this website]]) in Perl using scrot, ecasound and avconv to produce lesson audio and video while under Mac OS X I succesfully used the (non free) Camtasia tool. ===== Sample lessons ===== Sample lessons: * video and audio with camtasia under Mac OS X, using a Digital Pen for input and Omnidazzle for drawing on the screen: [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/SPM/Lesson-12.1.m4v|lesson]] from my Distributed systems: paradigms and models course in 2009-2010. * [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/AE1112/ae1210.1.mp3|audio]] and [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/AE1112/ae1210.1.pdf|blackboard dump]] under Linux with Audacity and Jarnal, lesson from my Computer Architecture course 2011-2012 * [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/SPM1213/spm2204.1.mp3|audio]], [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/SPM1213/spm2204.2.mp4|video]] (no audio) and [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/SPM1213/spm2204.pdf|blackboard dump]] under Linux with Xournal, using a Wacom tablet for input and an hand made perl script for recording (available at [[http://backus.di.unipi.it/~marcod/wiki/doku.php?id=teachingtools|this website]]): lesson from my Distributed Systems: paradigms and models course 2012-2013.