"Online Teaching Hack" trick tutorial 💻👇

Last week, I shared a short video on Twitter with a cool video trick where my hand comes out of the screen to help a student. I had a quite a few people asking me how it was done, so I thought I would make a quick tutorial.


 It's quite an easy trick... it's just about working out the layer order and the camera angles. The first thing I did was take a screenshot of a Google Meet screen and replace the camera screen with a green mask using Google Drawings. I then asked my son to help me record a short video with the Chromebook in front of him. It should look a bit like this...


After that, I had to film myself with a green screen behind me (I had to use a blue towel because all of my video equipment is at school) and a green screen in front me, in line with the bottom of the Chromebook screen. I then had to film myself, carefully pointing towards where the CTRL key would be in the edit...

The last layer was a picture of my living room, which has become my new "Online Learning Classroom"...

Then, it's time to put it all into WeVideo for the edit. Firstly, I had to remove all the green and blue from the clips and then resize them so that they all fit into shape. My timeline looked a little bit like this...


My "Learning Online Classroom" goes at the bottom, lined up with the Chromebook screen. On top of that is the student with his Chromebook... and then on top that goes my video, with a now transparent background. It needs to be carefully placed to line up with the Chromebook screen and so that the finger points more or less towards the CTRL key.

 Finally, the result should look a bit like this...


If you want to try it and get stuck, just send me an email to ryangornall13@gmail.com and I'll try and help... Good luck! 
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1 comment:

  1. Chuck Bush30 October 2025 at 08:41

    Thanks for sharing, Ryan Gornall! The breakdown of using a green screen and layering in WeVideo makes this “trick” genuinely achievable for online teaching setups. I particularly liked how you simplified the process of aligning video layers and background—it’s a smart way to boost engagement. As someone working as an online tutor in Singapore, I’ve found that students respond far better when the visual setup feels dynamic, and techniques like this definitely help.

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