Put the video further down the lesson, next to the bit it demonstrates
A lesson page has a shape by default: the video first, your written notes underneath. That is the right shape for most teaching, where the video IS the lesson and the notes support it.
It is the wrong shape when the video demonstrates one particular thing. If you have written three paragraphs setting up a technique and then a forty-second clip of you doing it, the clip belongs after the setup - not before it, where it plays to someone who has not read the setup yet.
How it works
- Say where it goes. "Move the video down so it plays after the bit about wedging the clay." Bernard puts a marker in your notes at that point.
- Look at it. The lesson page shows the video where you asked, with your notes flowing above and below it.
- Approve. Like every change, learners see it when you say so (How do I approve or undo changes?).
A few things worth knowing. This decides where a video sits; it does not add one. A lesson can hold several (Put more than one video on the same lesson), and each can be placed the same way. If you ask for the same video in two places, the first one wins and the other is quietly ignored, so nothing you have written is lost. And if a lesson has no video yet, the marker simply does nothing until you add one (Put my own video file into a lesson).
Most lessons never need this. Reach for it when the video is a demonstration of a specific step rather than the lesson itself - and leave it alone when the video is the teaching and the notes are the summary (Add a lesson to my course).
The prompt
“In the [lesson name] lesson of my [course name] course, move the video down so it plays right after the paragraph about [the bit it demonstrates].”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Can I put a video in the middle of my lesson notes?
- Yes. Tell Bernard which paragraph it should follow and the video plays there instead of at the top. Everything above it reads first, the video plays, then the rest of your notes carry on underneath.
- Can I have two videos in one lesson?
- Yes - a lesson can carry several videos on one page, and you can point each one at the paragraph it belongs to. The first one stays the lesson's video: its running time is what the syllabus shows and its position is what a learner comes back to. See the page on more than one video on a lesson. If each video is really a step of its own, two lessons is still the better shape.
- Will moving the video break anything for learners already on the course?
- No. It changes where the player sits on the page, nothing else - the same video, the same captions, the same transcript, the same place in your syllabus. Learners see the new layout only after you approve the change, like everything else.
- What if I change my mind?
- Ask for it back at the top and it goes back. Nothing about the video itself has moved - only where the page puts the player.