Teaching from Anywhere

I use my phone as a document camera, which is nothing new. AirDrop is an option since my school computer is now running OS X Yosemite. I was using my own Python web application to upload these to the computer last year, but that was limited to one file at a time. Now I can send a whole stack of photos of student work at once, which makes it the obvious choice.

The laptop is parked to be plugged into the projector in a spot that doesn’t sacrifice student real estate, but is accessible if I need to get to it:

The thing that has always bugged me is having to be in one place in the room to do, well, anything. I like sitting with students. I have interesting and useful conversations with students when I’m among them, not while standing at the front of the room. My solution in the past has been to bring the laptop around the classroom with me and sit down next to students. Two things bother me about this:

• When move to join a table next to students, I always take up more room than any other person. This is because I’m there with a laptop, Wacom tablet, and some notes if I need them for the lesson. My students are too polite to actually object when I move in and they always consolidate their things to make room. I know the whole time, however, that they are wishing I wouldn’t. This whole process repeats if I want to move during the lesson, which I always do.
• I have an Apple TV that I’ve used in the past to wirelessly display my screen in this situation, but the lag between my movement and the display is enough to be uncomfortable for me, and render my handwriting into the illegible range if I’m not extremely careful. I can stream student work to the Apple TV from my phone directly, but without the ability to zoom in on what’s actually important or annotate, the capability limits more than it offers.

I have had the wireless kit for my Wacom tablet since last year, so that doesn’t need to be connected to the projector laptop anymore. To switch applications (which I do frequently), write more than a couple words on the screen (which is more efficiently done through typing), or upload student work, I’ve always needed to go back to the laptop. This additional step during class is a moment of dead time – a moment during which students have no choice but to wait and do nothing, or do worse. This moment of dead time has been an unavoidable consequence of my classroom design and configuration.

The arrangement that has minimized (if not eliminated) all of these issues for this new year is this set of devices:

I already mentioned the wireless Wacom tablet for handwritten work. The wireless keyboard (picked up during RadioShack’s sale of excess inventory this summer) lets me type from anywhere in the room. The Magic Trackpad lets me do the rest.

I can take all three of these anywhere in the classroom if I need to, though often one at a time will suffice. I can switch applications, write on the wall, and type from pretty much anywhere. For sharing, viewing, and cropping student work, I can use the trackpad to manage the stream of photos that I (or my students) send to the computer through Airdrop.

This freedom to run my class untethered from the computer and centered wherever student thinking is happening is worth every ounce of aluminum, glass, and plastic. This freedom makes a difference.