Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, schools found in Zoom and other (typically business-oriented) video-conferencing systems a workable if incomplete substitute for conventional classroom instruction and interaction. Teachers and students sat in front of individual devices, screens, and cameras, and——using various online systems and services——engaged in a range of practices only broadly comparable to in-person teaching and study. How did educational practice adapt to this “virtual” setting? How do virtuality and reality interrelate pedagogically as counterparts? This paper addresses these questions by examining the online appearance of two acts or gestures that are said to constitute the “basic form” of education: pointing and showing (Zeigen). It focuses specifically on the way these gestures are realised through computer interfaces and “pointing devices”. Through reference to publicly available video recordings of teaching under pandemic conditions, virtuality is shown to appear not as the opposite of reality (however defined), but in part as an extension and amplification of indexical action and communication. Pointing is shown to be multiply-layered and——indexed, but as predominantly occurring as a “demonstrative” showing to would bring into presence to the student what is otherwise absent. At the same time—and despite the fact that the computer has been portrayed specifically as a pointing machine—it is the limitation of pointing operations, rather than their power.