Work Station Upgrade pt.1 - Monitors

Setup when I’m teaching. Usually the right monitor is in landscape mode, but here, it’s in portrait so I can fit three windows on top of each other. As you can see, they’re still each about the size of the 13” MacBook Pro screen.

Here, I’ll talk about the different things that I’ve done with my setup at home so far to best adjust to working from and teaching from home.

For this first one, it’s one of the last upgrades I did, but it should really be the first for most people if they can afford it and have the room. I’m talking about a second monitor. When teaching through Zoom or Google Meet, it’s imperative that you’re able to see your students and even if their cameras are off, it’s good to be able to see chat or whatever means they decide to communicate with you. When I’m sharing my screen or presenting something, my students and their faces automatically go to the second screen. It’s actually really great that I can see when they raise their hands and I can also monitor chat as well.

For my new setup I have two 27” 1440p monitors. That’s a bit overkill but since I do enjoy gaming and my PC can handle it, I figured why not. Plus, my main monitor also has a 165hz refresh rate so it’s also really nice for my fps games that I enjoy to play when I have the time.

The next thing after getting a second monitor is to get monitor arms. I got dual arms because I wanted to free up some desk space. I’m really glad I did because a secondary benefit to having monitor arms is is that you can adjust the configuration of the monitors as you see fit. For me, I sit in front of my main monitor and my secondary one is to the right of me. Usually it’s in regular landscape mode because when I’m not teaching, I put other information there or videos. When I’m teaching, however, I like to turn it 90 degrees so it’s in vertical portrait mode. It’s just a few clicks in Windows to put it in that orientation and also adjust the arrangement of the windows so that when your mouse moves to the other screen, it doesn’t jump all over the place.

This way, I can have three different windows to my right without having to look really far right. Since these screens are relatively big, the right half of my second monitor is pretty useless unless I’m watching a video. But making it vertical means that I can see everything and stack program windows on top of each other. When in this orientation, each window is about as wide as my 13” Macbook pro so it’s not like the windows are small.

For my main screen, I have Zoom and my main Chrome screen where I share presentations and look through Canvas and emails. On the right side, I have OBS at the very top so I can monitor what the students see, the secondary Zoom screen in the middle, then any personal Chrome tabs at the bottom. So far, it’s been a lot easier to navigate and I don’t feel like I’m readjusting windows every minute so I can see the students. Second monitor - highly recommended.