Taught my first online class today. I tried to recreate a physical class as much as I could: I put the camera far from me, put on a suit and tie, and used a whiteboard I bought for it. Not sure if it made a difference pro/con to students, but I’ve asked them for feedback on it.
Here's a screenshot. I set up in a sun room that had good lighting, although unfortunately it gets hot. I'm not sure I have another room with adequate lighting, although I might try to set it up. 
I set the video to only show me on my computer, so I was always looking at myself. I figured that would give me something to look at and make sure I was looking near the camera (in addition to being able to see how I looked to students).
There are two improvements I want to make for class two tomorrow. First, I didn't ask students to show their own video when I called on them. I ditched my usual cold-calling system and instead assigned specific cases to specific students in advance. But b/c I set my video to...
..only show me, I had thought that was what students would see, too. So it didn't matter, I thought, if students had their video on. If I'm not mistaken, though, when I set my screen to show me, that didn't control what students saw: So when I called on a student w/ no video,
it was just a blank screen w/a name when the student spoke. Going forward, I will ask the students to show their video if possible when I call on them, or else, alternatively, students can set it so their video only shows me.
Second, I didn't realize I could control whether students were muted. I accidentally muted the whole class at some point in the session, which meant I had to see that a student was requesting to be called on and individually unmute them. Going forward, my thought is that
I will unmute students and ask them to individually mute until they want to speak. That way they won't accidentally make noise if they're in a noisy place, but I don't have to see they are requesting to speak and unmute them. They can just talk.
The hardest part about teaching online, so far, is that it's so hard to read the room. When I teach, I'm constantly assessing how it's coming across by looking at body language, nods, head tilts, etc. And I like to ask students what rules they think are best by show of hands,
which then opens students up to debating the rules. (Once you raised your hand, you've started to participate and taken a view; it facilitates volunteering and engaging more.) I don't yet have a good sense of how to recreate that yet.
Zoom lets students express an upvote or downvote, which I tried to use to replace the hands up, but it's a tiny icon and you have to be 1 foot from the screen to see it. So I had to break from my usual space and peer right up to the camera to get that feedback, which was odd.
There may be a way to make that icon larger, so I can see it from where I teach, but I haven't figured that out yet. Hopefully I will, and will make other improvements from the feedback I asked students to send in.
One last thought. For audio, I used a USB microphone. I bought for $75 when I planned to start a 4th Amendment podcast. I never started the podcast, but I figured the mic would give somewhat better audio quality than my laptop.
I did an A/B comparison before recording to see if it mattered, and my sense was that it was different, but not obviously better (perhaps b/c I was far away). I'll probably test that again before deciding whether to keep using it. /end
Some are saying I should ditch the jacket and tie. I want to stick w/ them for now b/c I am trying to instill a sense of normalcy and stability. I wore that before, and I'm trying to give them as familiar an experience as I can. Perhaps a comfort in a crazy turbulent world.
