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

Students of all ages can use Edpuzzle. In some cases, however, depending on your state or regional laws, you might be required to first obtain parental consent. Find all the information you need to know in the following article.

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 (e.g., because of my students' age or legal exemptions)." option when asked if you have parental consent.

Parental consent permission slip templates

For schools in the United States or the European Union/EEA, respectively, Edpuzzle provides a template to help schools obtain parental consent, where applicable (attached to this article). 

Nevertheless, it’s up to schools to determine how best to use the template, to complete it with their own contact information and information about the services they enable, and to share it along with Edpuzzle’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

SCHOOLS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND COMMUNITIES HAVE DIFFERENT REGULATIONS AND APPROACHES, AND EDPUZZLE CANNOT ADVISE YOU ON COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAWS APPLICABLE TO YOUR SCHOOL. YOU SHOULD OBTAIN ANY PARENTAL CONSENT THAT MAY BE REQUIRED BY YOUR SCHOOL IN A MANNER THAT COMPLIES WITH THE LAWS OF YOUR JURISDICTION.

Have questions about parental consent? Don’t hesitate to contact us at support@edpuzzle.com. 

Before you get started, we need to validate your email address. This 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.
2. Click on the blue "Send link" button, under the "Account" 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.
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. 

First of all, what is accessibility? What do we mean by that? 

The term accessibility is generally used when referring to the design of products, devices, services or environments for people with disabilities. To put it simply, accessibility ensures that everyone, no matter their condition, can use a certain product or device or access a specific place or service.

At Edpuzzle we strongly believe in the right to access information and communication technologies recognized by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We work hard to make our service accessible to everyone and, more specifically, to ensure our users can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with our service and contribute to it.

In this sense, Edpuzzle's obligation to accessibility is guided by the leading global accessibility standards, including U.S. Section 508 and WGAC 2.0 (ISO/IEC 40500). Attached to this article you’ll find Edpuzzle's Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), a document that evaluates how accessible the Edpuzzle service is according to U.S. Section 508 and WGAC 2.0 (ISO/IEC 40500).

Questions or comments on Edpuzzle's VPAT or any other matter related to the accessibility of our service are more than welcome. Feel free to contact us at support@epduzzle.com for further information!

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 then click on the "I'm a teacher" button.
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!

With open classes, your students can join a class and complete assignments without an Edpuzzle account!

To create an open class, go to “My Classes” and click on “Add new class.” In the new window, add a name for your class and an optional description. Then, select “Open” under “Class type.” (Please note that once you choose your class type, you won't be able to change it.)

You can choose to allow your students to create their nicknames or have Edpuzzle automatically create them. If you don’t check the box, students will be asked to enter a nickname when they join. (You can always change this later by clicking on the “Class options” button.)

To assign a video to an open class, you should follow the same steps as for a classic class. Visit “My Content,” choose a video and assign it to the class you want. For reference, open classes display the word “OPEN” to the right of the class name.

To invite students to the class, click on the "Invite students” button in the upper right-hand corner of the class page. You can either share the link or class code with your students. Students won’t be able to save their sessions, so if they leave your open class and then join again at a later time, they’ll be treated as a new user.

In contrast with classic classes, open classes don’t have a “Student” tab. This is because each assignment will generate its own list of students as they join your open class.

Open classes do not include the gradebook feature, but you will be able to see the progress for each individual assignment.

Any questions? Contact us at support@edpuzzle.com. 

With Edpuzzle's Live Mode feature, you can project your video live in front of the whole class while students answer in real time on their own devices!

To start a live assignment, select a video from your content and assign it to a class. Then, from the assignment screen, click the blue “Go live!” button.

To enter your live assignment, your students just need to log in to their Edpuzzle accounts and go to your class. This will automatically take them to your live assignment. When all your students are ready, click the blue “Start!” button and the video will play on your projector screen.

The questions will appear on your students’ screens as well as on the projector screen. You’ll see how many students have answered the question so you can decide when to move on.

When you click on “Continue,” students will see any feedback you’ve included for the questions on their screen and the correct answer for multiple-choice questions. On the main screen, you can click on “Show responses” to display the results in percentages for the whole class. Names won’t be shared so your students won’t be embarrassed if they get a question wrong. You decide when time’s up and when to move to the next question.

To finish the assignment, click “Exit live.” You can also quit the assignment at any moment. (You'll be automatically exited from live mode after 3 hours if you forget to click "Exit live.")

You can access your student’s grades by clicking on the assignment or from the gradebook.

Note: At the moment, live mode isn't compatible with the Android app. If your students are using smartphones or tablets, they should use the web version on their devices rather than the mobile app.

Any questions? Contact us at support@edpuzzle.com.