EdPuzzle

Thanks to my #langchat family, I was introduced to EdPuzzle a few weeks ago.  Since I have been researching flipping my classroom and simultaneously planning for our switch to 1-to-1 next year, I thought this would be a good app to get familiar with.  Here was my experience and reflection after my first assignment:

Pros:

1. The tutorial videos on their website walk you through each step of the process.  I can normally figure tech-stuff out on my own as I go, but having these videos to refer to was really helpful.
2. Their customer service is unlike anything I have experienced before!  When I tweeted a question/comment, they responded almost immediately.  When our school filter blocked something, they gave us a possible solution. They were ON it!
3. The data you receive from your student's submissions is incredibly detailed.  You can see how many times they viewed each segment.  You can see class averages.  You can see a question by question break down with individual students listed by the level of reinforcement they need.  You can easily export the report to Excel for printing or other manipulation.
4. Students do not need an email address to create an account.  This is just one more way of eliminating unnecessary steps in the process.  They can easily login via their Google account, or they can opt out and create a separate account.  So nice.

Cons:

1. Without being 1-to-1 yet, I had to guarantee lots of notice for my students without internet access to be able to complete the assignment.  After a 5 days' heads up...I still had students in each class that didn't even view the video.  Not exactly "flipping" a class!
2. It was more challenging than I expected to find a video I wanted to manipulate in the first place.
3. Our school security filters currently block YouTube which means EdPuzzle does not function properly on student devices if I get my video from YouTube.  (They did say a future upgrade will fix this problem, though.)

For my first video, I chose an advertisement for Mexico City.  The speaker speaks quite fast and uses words that my students are unfamiliar with, so I did small voice overs in certain spots to make it more comprehensible.  I also included 3 multiple choice questions based on current vocab and grammar structures. Students were challenged but they were not intimidated.  The class average was above 80% on each of the 3 questions.

Overall, this app was something I really enjoyed experimenting with.  I am already plotting my next assignment for the coming weeks.  I took our first assignment as simply a completion grade (which I never do!) so that students could familiarize themselves with the program.  I look forward to when they are confident with it and we can utilize it to its fullest potential!