Before COVID all of my tutoring was in person. When I moved online to continue supporting my students I found there were areas I couldn’t support in the same way. I couldn’t see how my students were printing and forming their letters.
I have found a document camera to be an excellent tool for supporting online learning. I can see exactly how my students are forming their letters and I can coach them through it responding to their actual movements.
We play practise and review games together and they can physically move their counter around the printed pdf of the game board I’ve sent them.
They can complete a worksheet/activity page/torpedo drill with me seeing exactly what they are doing and I can offer support or advice as they complete the task.
I can also use a document camera to demonstrate an activity to my students. They can see the direction I’m forming the letters, or how to complete an activity, or read text in a novel study together, or model a math operation, or follow the story in a picture book I’m reading to them and see the pictures, and many other ways.
There are many commercial document cameras you can buy, or you can create a frame to hold your camera or iPad.
Another alternative is a small card camera with a mirror tile. We have created a diagram of a document camera for you to print and make at home. Print it out, cut it out, and add a small mirror tile. You can give or send these to your students so they can do the same, and you are ready to start using it straight away. You put this above your computer camera, open Zoom or access your computer camera, and it will reflect directly onto the screen.
You or your student place a hard surface on the keyboard to lay the document on, and you are ready to observe or demonstrate how to write, draw, play, create, or solve exercises and activities.
I grew up in a time when I remember my teacher’s using overhead projectors to show us examples on the wall. It was a manual slideshow presentation. Very clunky with an awful lot of transparent cells being shuffled around and put on and off the machine. I think I also remember an underlying smell of dust coming from the bulb lighting the screen. Things have come a long way since then, and document cameras seem like a simple but necessary tool to add to your ever expanding toolbox needed for online learning.
Tutoring Activity
Make Your Own Document Camera
I have found a document camera to be an excellent tool for supporting online learning.
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