Distance Learning with the Emerald Bay Outdoor Academy

The Emerald Bay Outdoor Academy was preparing for it’s first full season in March 2020. Groups had been booked, staff had been hired and camp was preparing to open for the season when COVID-19 began to shut down schools and cities as their first week began. So they began an experiment in what distance learning might look like for the camp, livestreaming content straight to Facebook hoping to have live interactions with students at home by chat.

I was asked to help facilitate the project and began coming up with a plan for how it would work. I installed OBSOpen Broadcaster Software which I had used in the past to do Facebook live streams for leader meetings for Camp Whitsett. This software would be my digital switching platform; all of my slides, audio, video and logos would all run though this software. After some research, I found out that Skype now has a built in feature allowing it to produce NDI streams which would add much more flexibility to my switching. With some testing over at Emerald Bay we were able to use a standard Bluetooth headset connected to an iPhone on a Skype Call while a second person handled the camera. We used the NDI plugin for OBS to pull the individual high quality stream in. We had a graphic artist set up slides and animations and with a little practice we had a live stream with Q&A that we could run from anywhere with an internet connection.

To facilitate the Q&A sessions we had a team writing the best questions in a Google Doc and including answers. I had my audio set so I could speak directly through Skype to our instructor but the audience on the stream would only hear me if I switched it on allowing me to give the instructor on screen cues or answers if needed. This setup worked really well for us and I would continue to use it for future events.