ManyCam - Getting Started

 Getting Started: 

Online teaching is a growing industry that has exploded during the pandemic, but it isn't a new thing. I started teaching online in 2018 when I took a little break from the brick-and-mortar schools. Many of the companies that I worked for required that you provide the students with some type of external reward. This reward could be anything from stickers to lining things up on a magnetic board. Some people were even creative and used a tablet with google slides. The problem with the external reward is that you needed a lot of supplies so the rewards wouldn't become monotonous. ManyCam has numerous objects and features that allow you to change rewards for any given class without the added supplies. 

Objects: 

As I became more proficient with ManyCam I added more objects to use with my students. Sometimes we collected dancing stars, other times we collected ice cream scoops that we pretended to eat at the end, and other times I changed the face accessories so that I ended up with a top hat, monocle, mustache, and crazy hair. It was fun to play around with the features and it livened up the class. 

Chroma Key (Green Screen)

The green screen is a feature I used in the early days of my ManyCam adventure. I used it to display the company logo for my background and sometimes to put myself in interesting places, like the ocean or sky. You will need at least a Studio subscription for this feature, but once you have it, the possibilities are endless. 

Layers

One of my FAVORITE features is the layers option. This was particularly useful when the pandemic shut down our schools and had us teaching online. It is one thing to teach online when the program is set up for it, complete with a platform to teach from. When the schools shut down, I was fortunate that I already knew a bit about teaching online and had a lot of supplies and resources for it. However, many teachers and students were learning on the go. ManyCam was one of the resources that really helped me work with my students. With this, I could do a screen within a screen. This came in handy for teaching lessons when I needed to display something and explain what was going on in the text but still needed the students to be able to see me. Below is a screenshot from one such lesson: 

In the video below I will walk you through the ManyCam basics. It has so many wonderful features that will take your online teaching or even your zoom meetings to a new level. So, check on the video to get you started.