Lightboard Studio

Welcome

The Lightboard studio is available to anyone in the Franklin & Marshall community. It is a resource for creating supplemental instructional video that can help you introduce visual ideas, review topics, flip your classroom to free up class time, or create a bank of reference materials. 

The lightboard is a heavy pane of glass lit by bright LEDs. Like a clear dry erase board, the LEDs illuminate the brightly colored markings and you can face your audience while writing.

Preparation

Rehearse your presentation at a dry erase board prior to your presentation.

• Leave a blank space at head level; otherwise, the writing will obscure your face.

• Time your presentation to get an idea of how long the video will be. Multiply this by 5 to get an idea of the minimum amount of time to allow in the studio. Almost all sessions involve at least 2-3 takes, and additional time is needed to set up, get comfortable in the room, and address technical matters.

• If you’d like to refer to notes while you present, feel free to bring a hard copy, your own laptop, or a mobile device. There is an extra monitor in the space that your slides notes can be projected to.

Text, images, video

If you would like to incorporate text, images, or video into your presentation, you should set them up in a Powerpoint/Google Slides presentation and upload it to Google Drive or a USB flash drive. You will be able to access it on a computer that’s set up in the studio and advance through the slides with a remote during your presentation.

• You must use a 16x9 aspect ratio (Themes > Slide size)

• We recommend keeping all content to one half of the slides so that you have room to write and be seen. Titles and headings are an exception; if centered at the top of the slide, they will typically appear above your head. If you are right-handed, keep the content on the right side of the slide. If you are left-handed, keep it on the left. 

• The content of your Powerpoint presentation will appear on the preview monitor in the room, but not on the lightboard itself. Annotating your slides can take some getting used to, so we recommend practicing this before you start recording.