Teacher Streamers

A question I get a lot in conversations these days is, "What impact has covid had on teaching?"

Teachers are scrambling to create a "synchronous" online experience to simulate their former classrooms and are being asked to teach both in-person and online in hybrid models. One thing is certain, teachers have been forced to stream some of their content.

This is a roundup of Teacher-Streamers I've encountered to inspire educators looking to become streamers. Please link to other model streamers in the comments. This is a new skillset that millions of teachers and professors across the globe are having to pickup on the fly. Let's share what others figure out, so we all can improve.

3Blue1Brown 

Grant Sanderson is a Stanford math grad who started his online teaching career at Khanacademy and has since become a famous Youtuber with a large following and incredible Linear Algebra playlist. He recently did 10 live lessons and showed the world a modern rendition of the old lecture format. Check out his setup with Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). 

Coding Train 

Dan Shiffman is an NYU CS professor who has been teaching online for roughly 5 years. His codingchallenges are a powerful way to learn to code and he has an impressive collection of community contributions. He made a video of how he streams. 

Michael Wesch 

The KSU prof who has been experimenting with and trailblazing online teaching for over a decade. He discusses OBS and his Fall teaching plans for the coming school year here. He has tips on setting up online classes more generally in a few shorter videos in this playlist. 

Matt Solomone 

A math professor at Bridgewater State Univ who teaches on Twitch? I am intrigued.  Here is his rig. 

StatQuest 

Josh Starmer is a UNC Chapel Hill professor who has been uploading statistics concepts "Clearly Explained" to youtube for the past 5 years. BAM. 

David Robinson 

@drob is a former R instructor from Data Camp. He is a tidyverse expert who livestreams an hour a week analyzing a dataset he has never seen before. For practical coding skills like statistical programming in R, it doesn't get more instructional than a livestream practitioner IMO. 

"Dr. Chuck" Severance 

Python for Everybody (PY4E) has been a labor of love and a gift to the world in the spirit of open source under the guise of a MOOC. Chuck is a champion of learner privacy and has stayed at the forefront of online learning management tools since the dawn of the internet. 

Walter Lewin

Forever tainted by harassment allegations, Walter Lewin is one of the original teacher streamers who posted his lectures online and they were amazing. The internet has come so far since 1999, and the possibilities for interactions between learners has increased tremendously.

I think Lewin's legacy demonstrates an important point about the future of teacher-streamers. It is not enough to be incredible at explaining a concept and bringing it to life, in order to be a great teacher-streamer, you need to be an incredible human being too.