Lightboard Best Practices

Planning

• Contact JOLT via KBox or jolt@mail.johnstoncc.edu if you would like to arrange one-on-one training.
• Book a reservation through the JOLT page on the Staff and Faculty Sharepoint site. 

Outlines and Scripting

• Use a Lightboard Module Template if you are incorporating a PowerPoint presentation. Here is an example.
• Use a storyboard form to sketch out your module plan and organize the flow of your video.

Five minutes! One topic, one board, stop.

• Organize your lectures ahead of time by developing a script. The script may be used later for video captioning.
• Be natural when on camera and teach as you would in a face-to-face class. Holding notes on camera is fine
• Set a clear objective (one topic) for each video.
• Be able to meet your objective with one board’s worth of content. Plan your talk so you know where you are going to be drawing on the Lightboard. If you need to erase (much) or add another board, it's probably too long.
• If people are going to watch several videos, they don't want an intro for each one.
• Once you get the hang of it, you can successfully record 3-4 short videos per hour. You should probably plan to record only one hour at a time.
• Practice on an equal sized white board (optional)

Clothing

• Don’t wear black or dark colors. You will blend into the background & look like a floating head!
• Wear solid colors. Small patterns and thin lines can make odd effects on video. 
• No text, logos, or nametags – they will be inverted during the post-production process.

Recording

• Pause before starting and look at the camera. This gives you a clean cut point, to edit out your walk-on.
• Record only one file for the video. If you make a mistake, say “Pause” out loud, clean up and get ready to start over, then say “Resume” out loud and continue on. That way you can edit out the middle part.
• When writing on the board, look at what you are writing.
• When talking about something on the board, point at it and look at it.
• When pointing, try to point from the side, not from the back, so your fingers stand out against the background
• When you aren’t writing or pointing, look at the camera.
• Leave yourself a window between your content, and try not to draw horizontal lines through your face.
• Don’t erase during the recording if you can avoid it.
• Dry-erase & wet-erase markers squeak. To reduce squeak, use fresh markers and don't push so hard against the glass. With a light touch, you can mostly avoid squeak.
• Markers are slow to erase. To avoid smearing, erase with a dry cloth first, and then remove any residue with glass cleaner.
• Consider pre-writing or drawing some content.

Images & PowerPoints

• Any images or text you want to add after the recording should have transparent backgrounds.
• PowerPoint slides should have black backgrounds. Use solid black slides between your content slides for pauses.