Easy Doc-Cam substitute

Suppose you want to use a doc-cam so you can work through a few problems on a worksheet for your students, but you don’t have a doc-cam. What can you do?

Improvise! Here’s something I do that works just like a doc-cam (or maybe better). I use my smartphone.

I have a bookcase near my desk, so I get my worksheet ready, turn on the video cam function, and put my phone on the shelf so that the camera lens is over my desk where the worksheet is. Then I do the worksheet and save the video — and I talk my way through the steps as I go. When you’re done, you just save the video, and you’ve made an instant tutorial!

If you’re really ambitious, you can do a little editing in something like iMovie, but the result is a video you can share — and you’ll even capture your voiceover while you talk through the worksheet.