Edpuzzle

Purpose

Why Edpuzzle?

Edpuzzle is an excellent tool for flipping your classroom. Create an Edpuzzle lesson, more on that below, and assign it to students to complete outside of class. When students complete the Edpuzzle lesson outside of class, it frees up more class time for you and the students to discuss a topic in greater depth, practice something more extensively, or perform a laboratory experiment or procedure (Dissecting anyone?). These are things that might not get done without the Edpuzzle lesson, or would take multiple class periods to complete. (Practical hint: Students who do not complete the Edpuzzle lesson outside of class may not participate in the discussion, practice, or experiment until they complete the Edpuzzle lesson in class, or at all, at your discretion.)

Edpuzzle is an excellent way to introduce a lesson. When students complete the lesson at home, you can review the results before class to see which things they already understand, and which things they do not, so you can focus your in class time on those things the students do not yet understand.

Edpuzzle is also a great review tool. If you assign a review Edpuzzle lesson before your in class review, like your lesson, you can focus your in class time on those things the students still do not understand well. If you assign the Edpuzzle review lesson after you in class review, it gives the students another opportunity for review for that important summative test, and they can come to class prepared to ask you a question before the test if need be.

How to Use Edpuzzle in My lessons

Find and Crop a Video

You can use videos from nearly any source. The three most popular sources are YouTube, teacher created videos, and videos/lessons already uploaded to and shared in Edpuzzle. Once you have located and saved your video. If it is longer than you need, you can crop it to shorten it.

Insert Questions/Comments

Edpuzzle enables you to insert multiple choice questions, open ended questions, and comments in the video wherever you want. If used for an introductory lesson, you can insert questions about what they just watched. If used for a review lesson, you can insert questions when something is mentioned, but before it is explained in the video. That way you can see if they know the answer(s), but they then get the information they should know after answering the question. It is a way for them to check themselves as they go through the lesson.

You can also insert your own audio notes for your students. Sometimes an audio note in your voice will bring a point to their attention, and improve their recall, better than a typed note you insert in the video.

Assign the Video Lesson

If this is your first Edpuzzle assignment, create a class and the site will automatically generate a unique class code for you to give you students. It also generates a link that you can post in a learning management system (LMS) or email to your students. Students will need to create an Edpuzzle account to use these class codes/links. This give you the option of viewing your students' grades individually or in a grade book.

You can create open classes, for which your students will still need to enter a class code or follow your open class link to join, but no student accounts are needed. You can see your students' progress for each video lesson individually, but you will not have the grade book view available. Open classes are a good way to use Edpuzzle with elementary students, as open classes do not collect any personal information like a classic student account requires.

In either type class, you can choose to allow skipping or prevent skipping through the video. I recommend that you prevent skipping. This means the students must watch, or at least play, the video before they can answer the questions. They will have a much greater chance of being successful if they watch the video.

Progress Monitoring

In both regular and open classes, you can see how much of a video a student has watched (shown in percentages completed), as well as how many times each student has watched a video segment between your inserted questions/comments. This helps you see which sections the students might not understand.

In the classic class (students have an Edpuzzle account), you can view the questions by student, or by question, so that you can see not only what questions a particular student missed, but also which questions more students missed and which wrong responses they chose. This helps you to understand if the students simply did not understand the question or were likely guessing (many different wrong answers) or if they misunderstood the concept (many of the same wrong answers).

Getting Started with Edpuzzle

Creating Video Lessons in Edpuzzle

Assigning Video Lessons in Edpuzzle

Managing Classes and Students in Edpuzzle

Managing Student Progress in Edpuzzle

Integrating Edpuzzle with an LMS

Free versus Pro Versions of Edpuzzle

CommonSense.org review of Edpuzzle

Created By: C. Cox