How do I extend my screen instead of duplicating or mirroring?

Learn more about this helpful tip to increase your overall screen real estate between your laptop and projector.

Written By Jay Heath (Super Administrator)

Updated at April 13th, 2021

As more faculty return to campus to teach, we want to highlight a key functionality for hybrid teaching: extending your laptop screen display. Some of you may have used multiple monitors while at home to add more screen real estate - learn more for Mac and Windows. Back at school, it’s important to note that you can extend your screen, instead of mirroring or duplicating, to your projector in the same way as you would with a monitor. Doing so provides the following capabilities:


  • Faculty can project students at home either on the projection screen or on their laptop, depending on the focus of the lesson
  • Faculty can “share screen” for students at home using the projection screen and keep students on their laptop screen for continuous viewing of students even when projecting content
  • Extending your screen gives faculty increased capability to take attendance, respond to messages, see email, etc. while students remain visible on the projection screen
  • Avoids complications of multiple computers and personal devices.


We do want to discourage the use of personal laptops as part of your hybrid setup. The primary reason for this is that we are limited in the support that we can provide for unfamiliar hardware, operating systems, security settings, etc. We feel confident in our ability to support our common setup across classrooms, so please let us know if this setup is not working for you in some way or you feel the need to supplement - we hope we have earned your trust as problem-solving partners so don't hesitate to be in touch!

If you would like any help with extending your screen or any other aspect of hybrid teaching, please reach out to the Technology and Teaching & Learning Teams - we are always happy to assist!

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