Getting Started

Welcome to Edpuzzle!

We're excited to have you here because it means you're ready to join a community of thousands of teachers who are engaging their students one video at a time.

Edpuzzle is an easy-to-use platform where you can make any video your lesson. With just one click, you can find video lessons created by other teachers, including formative assessment! Another click and you can adapt that video by embedding your own questions or audio. With the final click, assign it to your students and get beautiful hassle-free analytics: see who watched the video, who didn't understand the lesson and who did a good job. Students can re-watch the video as many times as they need at their own pace, while you can easily check their progress from your account. 

But enough about us, we want to know more about you and your students! If you're not comfortable with technology, Edpuzzle is as easy as it gets, and our support team is here to help you every step of the way. If you're looking for something powerful, Edpuzzle is flexible enough so you can build amazing video lessons in minutes. We know your students will love it! It's visual, interactive and it enables them to learn at their own speed.

If you're as excited as we are, feel free to jump in and let us know what you think! Listening to teachers is the best way for us to improve Edpuzzle and create a platform you'll truly love.

– The Edpuzzle Team

What is parental consent?

Privacy laws and/or regulations often require that parents (or legal guardians) consent to or are notified prior to their child's personally identifiable information (PII) being disclosed to a third party.

In the field of edtech, this means that teachers and schools must have proven parental consent before students provide any personal information to third parties, like Edpuzzle.

The fact that teachers cannot invite students to their Edpuzzle classrooms without confirming parental consent, combined with the impossibility of creating a student account without a unique class code or link, ensures that Edpuzzle does not collect any data it should not be allowed to collect.

When is it necessary to obtain parental consent?

As a general rule, parental consent may apply to different age ranges depending on state or regional law.

In the United States, student privacy is primarily governed by two federal laws: the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

• FERPA generally prohibits schools from disclosing personally identifiable information from a student's education records to a third party without written consent from the parent (or the student if over age 18). At the same time, however, FERPA allows for exceptions under which student PII may be shared without consent. One of these exceptions is the "school official exception," under which schools may share student PII with designated school officials with a legitimate educational interest. Third parties may be considered school officials if they are performing a service for which the school would otherwise use employees. Schools define who constitutes a school official with a legitimate educational interest in their annual notification of rights under FERPA.
• COPPA protects children under the age of 13 who use commercial websites, online games and mobile apps. While schools have an obligation to make sure the services their students use treat the data they collect responsibly, COPPA ultimately places the responsibility on the online service operator. At the same time, COPPA generally does not apply when a school has hired a website operator to collect information from students for educational purposes for use by the school. In those instances, the school (not an individual teacher) can provide consent on behalf of the students when required, as long as the data is used only for educational purposes.

In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states that the processing of a child's PII is only lawful when the child is at least 16 years old, although it allows for Member States to lower the age provided that it is not below age 13. Currently, the age limits are the following:

• Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia: minors under 16.
• France, Czech Republic, Greece and Slovenia: minors under 15.
• Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Spain: minors under 14.
• Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK: minors under 13.

According to the GDPR, schools are considered data controllers and are responsible for ensuring that student data is processed accordingly. In other words, schools from the EU must obtain parental consent prior to disclosing PII to any third-party service provider from children under the age limit determined by each Member State’s law.

In Canada, according to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), consent is valid only if it is reasonable to expect that the student whose personal information is collected would understand the nature, purpose and consequences of the collection, use or disclosure to which they are consenting. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has taken the position that, in all but exceptional circumstances, this means anyone over the age of 13. In other words, disclosure of PII of children under age 13 must be previously authorized by the children's parents or legal guardian.

Where do I get it from?

Contacting your IT admin – or anyone at your school responsible for data protection – should be the very first step. If you are not part of a school or in the unlikely event that your school will not take care of parental consent, you should request it for EVERY student that you invite to Edpuzzle.

What if I don't need parental consent or am exempt from obtaining it?

If you are not planning to use Edpuzzle with students in the above-mentioned age ranges, parental consent is not required in your case, or any legal exemption applies to the obtainment of parental consent, you can simply select the "No, it’s not required by my local laws" option when asked if you have parental consent.

Have more questions? Contact privacy@edpuzzle.com. 

Before you get started, we need to validate your email address which helps us make sure you are who you say you are and keep your personal information safe. You'll need to follow these steps:

If you're new to Edpuzzle: 

When you sign up for Edpuzzle, we'll send you a verification email. To verify your email address, you need to:

1. Check your email.
2. Open the Edpuzzle verification email.
3. Click on the "Verify your email" button or on the link.
4. This will open a window confirming you've been verified. You're all set!
5. If you don't receive the email within five minutes, please check your spam folder.

If you've already signed up for Edpuzzle, you can confirm your email by following these steps:

1. Click on this link to go to your profile: www.edpuzzle.com/profile?tab=settings.
2. Click on the blue "Send link" button, under the "Settings" tab.
3. Check your email (make sure it's the same one you used to sign up for Edpuzzle).
4. Open the Edpuzzle verification email.
5. Click on the "Verify your email" button.
6. A window will open confirming you've been verified!
7. If you don't receive the verification email within five minutes, please check your spam folder.

What if I don't receive the verification email within five minutes of signing up or clicking on "Send link?" 

1. First, check your spam folder. If you use Outlook, you should check your quarantined folder.
2. If the email isn't there, go back to your Edpuzzle account settings by clicking here: www.edpuzzle.com/profile?tab=settings.
3. Change the email address associated with your account to a different one where you can receive emails.
4. Click on the blue "Send link" button. You should receive an email within five minutes.
5. If you're still not receiving the email, your school may be filtering out these messages. You'll need to have your school's IT department whitelist our no-reply@edpuzzle.com email address in addition to any other potential filters which could prevent Edpuzzle from working properly. Please send this article on technical setup issues to your IT admin to fix this. 
6. Once you've completed these steps, click on the "Verify your email" button in the blue banner at the top of the page.
7. Open the email, click on the "Verify your email" button, and you'll be all set!

Please note that if you update your email address, this will become your new login email for Edpuzzle.

Keep in mind that updating your email address won't affect your connection with Google Classroom.

Just in case you were curious, here's some information about why we ask you to verify your email address:

1. To verify your identity
2. To recover your account in case you lose access to it
3. To contact customer support regarding changes to your account
4. To validate parental consent
5. To make sure that you're the only one using your email address

We take our students' privacy very seriously. That's why when students watch a video on Edpuzzle, they'll be streaming from www.youtube-nocookie.com, while teachers will continue to stream videos from www.youtube.com. 

Filter configuration for students

1. Block www.youtube.com.
2. Whitelist www.youtube-nocookie.com.

Visit the test student page to test the embedded videos for your students.

Filters configuration for teachers

1. Allow access to www.youtube.com.
2. Allow access to www.youtube-nocookie.com.

This way, teachers will be able to search for videos on Edpuzzle and assign them to students.

Visit the test teacher page to test the embedded videos for teachers. 

Please keep in mind that if your students are using the Android or iOS app, they'll be streaming directly from www.youtube.com, so you'll need to whitelist it.

If you have any more questions on how to configure your filters in Edpuzzle, please email us at support@edpuzzle.com and let us know how your school's filters are configured, and we'll be happy to help you out. 

With Edpuzzle, you can make any video your lesson in three easy steps:

1. Find a video on YouTube, upload your own or re-use a video lesson created by another teacher.
2. Then, edit the video to create your lesson. Record your voice to personalize it, and hold your students accountable by embedding questions in the video.
3. Assign the video to your students and check their progress in real time while they learn at their own pace. 

That's it. Powerfully simple.

Are you just getting started with Edpuzzle? Take our free Level 1 beginner's course!

If you want to start creating your own amazing video lessons using Edpuzzle, you'll need to create an account. If you haven't already, follow these easy steps:

1. Click the blue "Sign up" button and select the "Sign up as a teacher" option.
2. You'll have two options: you can use your Google account or provide your first and last names, email address and create a password.
3. To stay up-to-date, we recommend selecting the option to receive notifications about your account and improvements to Edpuzzle.
4. Make sure to check your inbox (and spam folder) for the verification email. This will give you full access to all of Edpuzzle's features.

Congrats! You just created your account!

You can also check out our article on account verification for more info. 

If you're just getting started with Edpuzzle, make sure to sign up for our free level 1 beginner's course!

After creating your account, you can easily connect with your department and school.

Type in your school name, and if it doesn't appear in the drop-down menu, at the bottom of the list you'll find the "Add new school option." Then you just need to select your subject area.

Now you're ready to find your first video!