Turn an Instagram Reel into a course lesson
Some of your clearest teaching may already exist — as a Reel. Sixty seconds of you demonstrating one real thing, shot and edited months ago, doing nothing but scrolling past followers. Once your Instagram is connected (My best work is on Instagram, not my site), that Reel can become a course lesson: copied onto your own site, hosted with your other lesson videos, no re-exporting or re-uploading from your phone.
How it works
- Ask. "Import my Reel about wedging clay into my pottery course as a lesson." Bernard looks through your connected Instagram, finds the video, and copies it into your course's own storage.
- Say whose voice is on it. This is the one question that matters — see below.
- Round it out. A video alone isn't a lesson: give it a title and a few lines of notes (Add a lesson to my course), and slot it into the syllabus. Learners see it once you approve, like everything else.
The honest bit: the music comes off
Most Reels carry a music track licensed for Instagram only — Instagram's deal with the music industry covers Instagram, not your website. So when a Reel is imported, the audio is dropped by default. That's not a limitation to route around; it's what keeps you on the right side of the licence.
What to do about it, in order of preference:
- If the audio is your own voice, say so — "the audio is me talking, keep it" — and it's kept. Then captions and a transcript follow automatically, like any lesson video (Captions and transcripts, written for me).
- Pick Reels where the teaching is visual — a demonstration, a process, on-screen text. These work beautifully silent, and many already do on a muted Instagram feed.
- Re-record a voiceover. Play the silent clip back, talk over it into your phone, and hand Bernard the new file instead (Put my own video file into a lesson) — often better teaching than the original, since you're speaking to learners rather than scrollers.
This road runs both ways, by the way: a moment from a finished lesson can become a clip for Instagram too (Turn a lesson into a shareable clip).
The prompt
“Import my Instagram Reel about [the topic] into my [course name] course as a lesson called [the lesson title]. The audio is [my own voice — keep it / just music — drop it].”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- Why does my imported Reel have no sound?
- Because of music licensing. The music on most Reels is licensed for Instagram only — it can't legally live on your own website — so the audio track is dropped by default when a Reel is imported. If the audio is your own voice, just say so when you ask: your voice is yours, and it comes across with the video.
- Will the lesson get captions and a transcript?
- If the video has speech, yes — captions and a transcript are written automatically a few minutes after import, exactly as for any video you upload. A Reel imported without its audio is silent, so there's nothing to transcribe; lean on the lesson notes instead.
- Does importing a Reel change my course straight away?
- The video lands in the lesson you named, inside your course — and like every change on a bernard site, learners only see it once you've checked the draft and given your approval.