Carlo Mariconda
Department of Mathematics “Tullio Levi-Civita”, University of Padua. Advisor Unipd for Digital Education, Apprentice Magician.
Alberto Tonolo
Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Padua
Abstract. The MOOCs, and online material design in general, stimulate the search for appropriate technologies. We can see this happening in the special glass board “Lightboard” of the Department of Mathematics, built and implemented following an initial open-source project by Prof. M. Peshkin of Northwestern University, with the intervention of Frank Cadillac, a famous Italian builder of great and small illusions.
Keywords: Lightboard, MOOC, post-production
I guess your lightboard is going to revolutionize the elearning business!
Beate Brede, Head of Talent Recruiting Management, Fraunhofer IFAM, Bremen, Germany.
⦁ Looking for an effective video system
Since 2015 the so-called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have become exceptional tools for the dissemination of mathematics. The MOOCs are free online courses, consisting of sequences of short videos, texts and quizzes. However, whoever oversees their realization becomes aware of the difficulty of producing an effective video.
Mathematics is typically explained on a board. Instead, the procedure to produce a MOOC video involves a presentation in Power Point by the presenter who explains with the aid of his gestures and is shot by a camera in a multimedia centre equipped with Chromakey (green background). Afterwards, a technician needs to edit the video so that the presentation will appear behind the presenter. Various other steps, by the authors themselves to the technicians, will produce an optimal synchronization between images and speech.
To maintain the naturalness of handwriting the only option available is to write on a tablet PC and video-record the desktop. However, the absence of a real person (or simply their icon from the webcam) apparently is not very effective and, according to some studies on MOOCs, can even be counterproductive.
⦁ From Lightboard to BoardOnAir™
In 2015 we became aware of a Lightboard produced by physicist M. Peshkin of Northwestern Boston University. This tool allowed users to make videos in which the audience is able to see the presenter frontally, while the presenter writes and draws images to which he can add comments live in a vacuum, using phosphorescent markers, and without any need for post-production work.
This board is a special glass blackboard, illuminated from the inside and accompanied by auxiliary instruments that allow both to reverse the image in order to make the presenter’s writings appear in the correct orientation, and to assemble the signal coming from the Power Point presentation of a PC to the camera image. The presenter just needs to press the button of the digital recorder and start the recording.
It took us two years to figure out how to transport / transfer the project we had seen on the internet – an open-source patent – not to mention the difficulty of building a structure with very particular characteristics made of glass and steel navigating through Italian bureaucracy which, for example, obliges the public administration to only purchase products from one specific catalogue: how can one do this if the product still does not exist?
Excerpts from videos by the authors made with the Lightboard BoardOnAir™
The Lightboard needs a massive structure, able to safely hold a glass measuring 2.40 meters by 1.20 meters, surrounded by LEDs and various other apparatuses: a camera, a device able to flip the right-left image, a television mixer, and a digital recorder. The video image is then mixed with the Power Point presentation or computer pdf.
We were lucky enough to meet Frank Cadillac, President of the Ring Club 314 of the International Brotherood of Magicians and builder – the only one in Northern Italy – of grand magical illusions, who appreciated and understood the “magical” effect we wanted to create. After meeting him several times, the structure we wanted gradually emerged.
For the complex settings of the various devices, we were assisted by the Office of Digital Learning and Multimedia of the University of Padua, which passionately carried out the task. We can still remember the exciting moment when for the first time at their headquarters we finally managed to obtain the video signal we wanted through all the steps from the equipment at play.
Finally, Niccolò Mariconda fine-tuned the photographic settings to create the desired tones and colours.
BoardOnAir™ at the Club Ring IBM 314 in Padua (left) and the final steps of the installation by Frank Cadillac (right)
After building the prototype, funded by the Department of Mathematics of the University of Padua, we trademarked the system BoardOnAir™ and assigned the rights for the marketing to the University of Padua spinoff Audioinnova. Specimens of BoardOnAir” are now present in various Departments of the University.
⦁ How to use BoardOnAir™
The advantage of BoardOnAir™ is that it immediately creates a complete, highly effective, high-quality video.
If what the teacher can write onto the blackboard is not enough, he can prepare a presentation in Power Point on a black background, imagining being present inside from the bust up, he then can insert an SD card into the recorder and start recording.
The video obtained is ready for immediate use without any post-production work. When the presenter is immersed inside graphs, tables, and diagrams, the whole thing becomes alive and attractive, and can effectively and enthusiastically communicate the passion of those who have dedicated their lives to teaching mathematics and other sciences.
In addition to numerous video lessons and educational seminars in Engineering, Mathematics, and Statistics, BoardOnAir™ has been used to create several MOOCs, including our Precalculus, Advanced Precalculus and Combinatorics, all accessible free of charge from all over the world on the prestigious platform FutureLearn.
BoardOnAir™ has also been used in various projects such as Raidmap (by Prof. Bonollo) involving colleagues who came specifically from Spain and Germany to use it.
During the first Covid-19 lockdown, BoardOnAir™ was the only working tool of the University of Padua that made it possible to record in solitude and total autonomy, without any risk of infection.
Bibliography
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