4 Reasons Why Parents Will Love Edpuzzle

Picture this. After giving a thoroughly researched presentation, you’ve finally convinced your administrators to get Edpuzzle for your school. Yay! Now comes the real challenge, getting parents to understand the value of using video lessons.

Parents are a tough bunch to please. They have different needs but mostly they want something that works well for their kid. But when you’ve got so many different learning styles amongst students, satisfying everyone can be a challenge.

We asked teachers to share insights into why their students’ parents love Edpuzzle. Between making learning more engaging for students and life easier for their parents, you’ll win over everyone with these four reasons.

Students don’t have to play catch-up

If you ever moved as a kid, you understand the struggle of adapting to a new school and new course content.

When Alessandra, a 5th-grade Spanish teacher, received a brand new student with no Spanish experience, she was at a loss for how to help the student catch up with the rest of the class. Fortunately for Alessandra, she had Edpuzzle as a resource.

Alessandra assigned Edpuzzle videos for her student to watch at home, allowing him to review verbs, grammar, and vocabulary that he missed. This saved Alessandra and the new student hours of time reviewing topics from the first half of the year.

A mid-year change is a big challenge for both the teacher and the student, but Edpuzzle helped Alessandra’s new student be at a more similar level with the advanced Spanish students in no time.

Playing catch-up is also a common occurrence in older grade levels. Beyond missing class because they’re sick, students are often away for sports games, appointments, or field trips.

Considering how packed with content a typical classroom curriculum is, students can easily start to fall behind in class.

Diana, a high school teacher in Wisconsin, felt this pain, with 5-10 students absent from her class each day during May. She stumbled upon a solution when she began searching through Edpuzzle’s content library for videos to assign to absent students.

By assigning videos for absent students to review at home, Diana spends much less time creating and teaching separate lessons. This gives her more time to focus on anything an absent student doesn’t understand.

Students feel like they can keep with their peers without having to sacrifice educational trips or extracurricular activities. At the same time, parents are happy that their children get to maintain a healthy, balanced school life.

Students can do homework independently

Some parents are lucky enough to always be available to help their children with their studies. Others work long hours and don’t always have the time to sit down with their kids and answer any homework questions. As a result, many parents turn to tutors for help.

Heather, a middle school Math teacher, found that Edpuzzle was the perfect tool to engage and empower parents to be more involved in their kids’ learning.

When she began to introduce the flipped classroom model, many parents were very hesitant because it was something that was new and unfamiliar. But when the benefits of video learning became apparent, many of these parents became strong advocates for Edpuzzle.

One parent described how her child would normally come home and almost be in tears because he was unable to complete his worksheets. The parent would then have to help her child complete the assignment.

But, once Heather started using Edpuzzle, the student had a notable boost in confidence and self-initiative. According to the parent:

“Now he comes home, sits down, and does his work diligently.”

Parents love that their kids can complete homework without needing an adult to be by their side. They also don’t have to worry about helping their child with a homework topic they don’t understand. Because really, how many of us can actually remember how to factor quadratic equations?

Since Edpuzzle videos are easy to replay, students absorb information more easily, making parents feel it’s no longer necessary to spend a lot of money on tutors.

According to Heather, some parents enjoy sitting and watching Edpuzzle videos with their children because it helps keep them up to date with the classroom material. They can watch what their kids are learning and take a more active role in their children’s learning.

Students are excited about doing homework

ESL teachers sometimes find it hard to give their students level-appropriate homework that their students will be able to complete. This is especially the case if a student has no prior exposure to English or is lagging behind the rest of the class.

Students in these situations get easily frustrated trying to understand and answer questions, causing them to give up. Despite wanting to help, parents also feel at a loss because they lack the language skills to understand the homework.

Lauren, who runs the English Skills Support Program at a high school, had a student who would use her lack of English comprehension as an excuse to not complete homework.

Understanding her student’s frustration, Lauren decided to assign her videos to help her catch up with the rest of her classmates in terms of listening ability.

To her surprise, her student was very responsive and started doing all of the homework. There were even times the student woke up at 5 a.m. to do the homework for the next day.

While traditional homework was confusing and difficult, with Edpuzzle videos, homework becomes less intimidating and more fun for the student. Fun homework? It’s every parent’s dream!

The student was able to catch up, improve her listening ability significantly, and overcome her difficulties with English. Meanwhile, her parents didn’t have to worry about not being able to help their daughter succeed.

Students can get differentiated instruction

Students with disabilities can struggle to follow the pace of lessons, but are too scared to ask questions and draw attention to themselves. That’s why teachers like Cristin, a middle school Social Studies teacher, make it a point to differentiate lessons for students.

She initially tried to give her students a voice using technology but quickly discovered that students with disabilities can get easily frustrated with it, especially when it doesn’t work well.

But when Cristin introduced her students to Edpuzzle, two key things stood out.

First, her students were able to set their own pace, rewatching the same segment of the video as many times as they wanted before they were confident about moving on. For those students who are a bit shy, this is a lifesaver!

Second, Edpuzzle allowed Cristin to provide more support for her students. She was able to embed comments, audio notes and questions in the video to help them better understand the content.

Together with the written notes she provides and the immediate feedback from the multiple-choice questions, Edpuzzle gave her students the possibility to take ownership of their learning.

While it’s important to make sure no student gets left behind, other students might feel like the class pace might be too slow. This was the problem faced by Abigail, a middle school Biology teacher.

The gifted students in her class used to get bored easily because they would finish their work early and not have anything else to do.

To combat this problem, Abigail started using Edpuzzle to assign these students more advanced videos. She usually finds ready-to-use videos in Edpuzzle and adds comments asking students to take notes or to summarize the video.

Students know that if they complete the tasks for the day, they can sign into Edpuzzle to watch these videos. Abigail finds that her gifted students not only receive a refresher of the material, but they also get to work at a pace that each one can set for themselves.

Parents will appreciate having their children be challenged and pushed to reach their full potential, while also giving them a much deeper understanding of the topic being taught.