How to Create an Online Lesson with Edpuzzle's Screen Recording Tool

It’s no secret – students love video. In fact, a 2020 study showed that children as young as four years old up to age fifteen spend over an hour watching videos on YouTube and TikTok every day!

While you don’t have to incorporate the latest TikTok dance into your online video lesson, you can make it as engaging as possible.

Recording an online video lesson means you can keep absent students up-to-date, you can still be “present” on a sick day and make life a whole lot easier for your sub, and you can flip your classroom by having students watch your video at home. That’s not to mention the million other creative ideas teacher Twitter is bursting with!

So, do you want to learn how to transform your live lesson into a video and create an online lesson with Edpuzzle? (It’s easier than TikTok choreography – promise!)

1. Install the Edpuzzle Google Chrome extension

The first step is easy – just download Edpuzzle’s Google Chrome extension. In addition to its screen recording feature, it also allows you to copy videos from YouTube to your content in Edpuzzle in just one click.

Once you’ve downloaded it, make sure to pin it for easy access. (Click on the gray puzzle piece to access your Google Chrome extensions and then on the pushpin icon next to Edpuzzle.) It looks like this:

2. Create your screen recording

Now it’s time to shine! You might walk your students through a math problem, take them on a virtual field trip, or present new material via slideshow. Anything that can be shown on your screen can be recorded!

Once you’ve got your screen set up, click the Edpuzzle icon in your browser bar. Then you have three choices:

• “Tab” records your current browser tab only.
• “Desktop” records your entire screen.
• “Camera only” records you! (Or whatever your laptop camera or webcam is pointed at.)

To add your voice (and we highly recommend you do!), make sure the microphone icon is switched on (it’ll appear in blue as opposed to red with a slash through it).

If you want to record yourself in a small box during your screen recording while in tab or desktop mode, do the same for the camera icon.

Click the blue “Start recording” button, and away you go!

This opens a toolbar with recording controls in your Chrome browser where you can toggle your microphone and webcam on and off, and pause, stop, or delete your recording.

When you’re finished, just click the stop button.

On the next screen, you’ll be able to preview your video, give it a title, trim it, choose a thumbnail image, and select your privacy options.

Click the “Upload Video” button to move on to the Edpuzzle video editor where you can really personalize your video lesson!

3. Give it your magic touch

Now it’s time to create an online lesson with your screen recording! With the Edpuzzle video editor, you can really take your video to the next level.

To start off with, use the “Cut” tab to trim your screen recording. This is especially useful if you have any dead air time right at the beginning or end of your video when you’re navigating to the “Start recording” and “Stop recording” buttons. You can also make cuts to the middle sections of the video if you made any mistakes while recording.

To take the video lesson viewing experience from passive to active, click on the "Questions" tab and play through your video until you get to a point where you want to add a question. From here you can choose to add a multiple-choice question, an open-ended question, or a note.

Once you've typed out your question, click save, and voilà! You’ve already taken your first step towards making this video more interactive! Just make sure to click “Finish” at the top right corner of your screen once you're done editing.

After you’ve mastered these skills, you’ll be able to create an online lesson with your eyes closed. Keep up the momentum – you just might be an education influencer in the making!