Teachers who attend our Summer Institute in Palo Alto become NGPF Fellows the following school year -- this Fellowship includes presenting with us at PD sessions, offering NGPF feedback on products, writing guest blog posts, ... the list goes on. Today features a Tech Tool Review from James Redelsheimer of Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, MN. Here's what James has to say...

Tech Tool:   EDpuzzle

Cost:   20 Videos Free, Pro Teacher comes with unlimited videos for $6.50 a month, and Pro-School starts at $55 a month. If you’ve had an account for a few years, you are grandfathered in and have unlimited videos, like myself.

Use Case:   EDpuzzle is great tool to use to have your students watch videos outside of your class to learn basic concepts, which allows for more class time to apply and analyze the concepts shown in the video. For example, students could watch a video explaining budgeting basics, such as the difference between gross and net income. Then class time could be spent on a budgeting activity or project without using scarce class time explaining these terms. EDpuzzle also allows you to insert questions, to hold students accountable for watching the videos. You can also add your own videos you make yourself, and embed questions to check for understanding. If you already Flip your classroom or are considering it, EDpuzzle is a great tool for this!

Implementation Guidance:

Teachers need to create an account, then create a class for each period. You will be given a class code that students can be given to students to join the class. They only need this code once, and every time they login to EDpuzzle they will see any assigned videos and their grade on videos they have watched. Students do need to create their own account: If your school assigns students a Google email address, the can just click on sign in with Google, and they will be good to go.

For the videos, my recommendation is to search for content already created by others with questions embedded by clicking on content, then EDpuzzle on the left. Once you find content you like, you can click on Edit, which will take you to a screen such as the one below, where you can insert multiple choice, short answer, and T/F questions. You can also crop the video, and even provide your own commentary with audio notes!

When your video is ready to go live, merely hit Finish and choose the class periods for the video. You can assign a due date, and prevent students from skipping through the video! See below an example of what I see when assigning videos to my classes.

There is also a gradebook where you can see who has watched a video, and even how much of a video someone has watched. (Pro-Tip: The multiple choice questions are graded automatically, which can save you time).

Pitfalls to Avoid:  Don’t assign videos that are too long. I always keep videos 10 minutes or less. Also, there are already awesome videos with embedded questions you can find using the content feature, so you can easily use these videos or add a few edits to them without spending hours upon hours creating your own content.

Even More Support:  I’ve searched for videos on EDpuzzle and used videos created by others and also created my own videos with embedded questions and audio notes. These videos are stored in my content on EDpuzzle and can be easily organized into folders by topic. For more info and examples, you can check out this presentation I’ve done on EDpuzzle.

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Here's some EdPuzzles that we recently created:

• The Rule of 72 (NEW)
• Job Interview Tips (NEW)
• Health Insurance Explained
• If Paychecks Could Talk (NEW)
• 5 Types of Student Loans (NEW)
• Warren Buffett's Advice to Lebron (NEW)

If you would like more information on how to use EdPuzzle, visit the EdPuzzle Teacher Support page!

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.

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