EdPuzzle

EdPuzzle is a technology app that I have been waiting for for a long time. It allows me to upload a video (from YouTube or anywhere else- my videos, or someone elses) and add questions that a student has to answer while watching the video. It also has a "no skip" feature that will not allow students to skip ahead while watching the video. Also, they log in with a preassigned code which sends me the results of their efforts. I not only get their results, I also know exactly the time they did the assignment, and how many times they watched different segments of the video .They can re-watch earlier segments of the video if they want to find out missed information for a question. This gives me a sense of the effort they put in to their assignment. One of the main hurdles that I have historically had with the "flipped class" model is that there didn't seem to be a way to determine if students actually watched a video. This app seems to significantly diminish that problem. In fact, it may actually be an improvement to the content presentation portion of a lesson as it is currently done, at least as it relates to the "slackers". As it now stands, it is relatively easy for slacker students to sit in a class, be looking at the teacher, be writing things down, but not really be paying much attention. As a teacher, I try to over come this problem by asking questions and otherwise engaging students during my presentations. However, if I have 20 students in a class, a student has, at least in theory, only 1/20th of a chance of being called on to answer any given question. Also, when called upon, they can feign effort by giving me an "answer", which is really just a random guess. It is usually tough to call students out on this type of thing. With EdPuzzle, all students have to answer all questions while being introduced to new content. The questions I embed in the video should be relatively easy to answer, provided the student is paying attention. I would reserve the deeper, more subtle questions for actual class time when I can discuss the issue in a more in depth manner. The EdPuzzle portion would used to give students baseline content within a unit.  I guess there would be ways to "cheat" the system, but none of the methods I can think of would be any less effort than just watching the 10-15 minute video. Also, it is currently easier to copy a fellow student's homework than it would be to find some way to circumvent EdPuzzle. I've tried EdPuzzle a bit already, and have been happy with the results. I'll have to continue to think through how this might influence the structure of my class, but I see EdPuzzle as a possibly very useful accountability tool. Here is a link to an EdPuzzle YouTube video series.