Work Station Upgrade pt.3 - Stream Deck
As mentioned in part 2, I use a customizable control pad called a Stream Deck to switch scenes in my Zoom, toggle mute / video settings, use a soundboard, voice changer, paste prewritten text, and so much more. This sounds like an ad for a Stream Deck, but they wouldn’t even need it since it’s been kind of hard to find one.
On Cyber Monday Micro Center had one for sale so I drove down and waited in line to get the regular one with a 3x5 layout. That’s 15 programmable buttons, but really you’re not limited to 15 because you can create multiple “pages” with different themes. For example, I have a set of buttons dedicated to Zoom functions such as toggling microphone and video, showing chat, participants, sharing, etc. I also have another page with OBS shortcuts for when I want to change scenes and play little animations and then another page dedicated to a sound board which can play meme-y sounds like air horns, the Mario death sound, or a sad trombone.
I understand that all of these things can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks, but that’s the thing. I’m saving time not having to navigate to a certain window to mute. There’s a dedicated button for that. I could open up Explorer and choose a sound to play, double click on it, have it open windows media player or something and it’ll load and play. Or I could just program the Stream Deck once and I can just press a button right away. Again, this is so far beyond what’s necessary when teaching online, but it does make things fun for me.
Along with the Stream Deck, I got a program called Voicemod which is a voice changer with a ton of different voice to choose from and you can make your own as well. They range from making me sound like a child or girl to a robot to autotune to the very deep-voiced Corpse. I usually use this when entering a breakout room or when trying to get the attention of someone. Or if I just want to mess around.
Side story with this Stream Deck and Voicemod. A couple of weeks ago, I had an IEP meeting before school started. This included the principal, both general education teachers, school counselor, school psychologist, parent, an intern. I had my new setup all good to go with microphone. I was quite proud of how professional everything looked and must’ve sounded. Fast forward to first period right after the meeting. I start welcoming the kids in class and I see several of them laughing. I ask, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Your voice. It sounds funny.” I pause and look down. My stream deck has chosen a voice called Vibrato which makes your voice sound like a nervous, dizzy robot. I turn off the effect and immediately email the science teacher who was also part of that meeting. She said, “Yeah, I thought it sounded kind of funny, like going up and down.” So yeah, great. I attended a whole meeting just like that. Fortunately, it was a very positive meeting and I didn’t have to talk all that much. I told the class about it and said, “Yup, I sounded like that the entire meeting. And see, that’s why you guys are the real ones. You actually told me. Maybe the other adults were just trying to be nice or thought I was nervous or my internet was having problems. But at least you guys said something. Like, you know, if you had a friend tell you that you had food on your cheek, they’re real because they don’t want you to go through that.” I’m not saying the other adults in that meeting weren’t real. I think they were just being polite. But saying that made my students laugh and maybe made them feel special. In any case, at least they laughed about it with me.