Occasionally I have to help some of my younger relatives that are still in school or college understand some of the material they learn. I can cover programming, math and physics. Since we’re geographically dispersed, the tutoring has to happen virtually. For a programming session this is easy. We have a shared editor and a video session going. I usually use Repl.it. For help on a paper we use Google Docs or Overleaf.
What about math and physics where I prefer pencil and paper? I have three requirements for our video sessions:
- I can see myself, see my student and see what I write on paper
- My student sees me and sees what I write
- Setup should be easy for my student
After much failed experimentation with Facetime (flips the video, so no good for recording writing), Camo (keeps not appearing in the list of available cameras on MacOS Sequoia), I landed on the following setup:
We use Google Meet. I have an iPhone and a Mac laptop and log into the same Google Meet session with both devices (Google Meet is the only video conferencing app I could find that supports this). To avoid the dreaded echo effect, I mute and lower the volume to zero on the iPhone. The iPhone is my paper and pencil camera and is mounted on an overhead desk mount. Since I only do tutoring occasionally, I like this phone mount because it is easy to attach to the table side and easy to take off again.
That’s it. Works really well. I make a Google Calendar entry with a Google Meet link and click on it from both the iPhone and the Mac. I start with the iPhone, mute it and lower the volume to zero. On the Mac, it asks me if I want to “switch to this device” or “join too”. I choose the latter.
Very simple for my student too. Google Meet is available on almost any computing device. They get the Google Calendar invite with the Google Meet link and we’re set.
