unapologeticallyb00kish

WeVideo: Amazing power and functionality with a slight learning curve

I’ve been asked to create a Media Production course for the 2026-2027 school year. The main purpose of the course is to create a daily school announcements broadcast. Currently, I am searching for an app that I can use for video production, green screen capabilities, and editing software. 

Several factors led me to choose WeVideo. WeVideo is a cloud-based video editor that enables students to collaborate on the same project over several devices. My students are issued Chromebooks by the school; however, they tend to be slow and glitchy, and many students prefer working on their devices at home. There were other apps I considered, but they solely interface with iOS, and my school doesn’t own many iPads. The NYS cell phone ban will make it more difficult to access iOS-based apps in school, so WeVideo seemed like the best option. It can be used on Macs, Chromebooks, and mobile devices and integrates with Google Drive and YouTube.

WeVideo offers a free version that allows students and educators to create and edit videos. However, this version has some limitations; the most glaring is that users are limited to 5 minutes of published video each month. Additionally, the video has a maximum resolution of 720p and there is a watermark on the video. While the free version could still be a tool used by students to make one video for a project, it will not be enough to meet my daily needs. 

There are various membership options and schoolwide plans are generally billed per seat. Each student and teacher using WeVideo would need their own unique login, however, those can be transferred if someone was to drop the class or if new students joined at the semester. This seems to be a viable option for my needs, but I will have to experiment more as the course is developing.

Nonetheless, WeVideo offers several fun features for editing videos. You can start from scratch or use a premade template. Once you’ve uploaded your video you can add text, audio, backgrounds, and other media. The greatest challenge I faced was layering the text, audio, and video over one another so that information was arriving on cue. I also liked that there is an icon in the video editor that allows me to make notes at various positions of the video. The help section offers a series of 1-2 minute tutorials called WeVideo Academy and a user-friendly teacher’s guide that walks educators through the class setup process. WeVideo connects directly to Google Drive, YouTube, Dropbox, Vimeo, and Dailymotion for easy video sharing. 

For the sake of transparency…I will share that according to Google, WeVideo is intuitive and easy to use. I happen to disagree with Google. In fairness, I’ve not done much video editing other than a 25 minute history video of the sites I saw while teaching in France. I used Windows Movie Maker back in 2010 and while I nailed the soundtrack to the video, my use of 50 different transitions and scrolling text were unfortunate choices! I’m sure my lack of experience is part of the problem, and I found the tutorial videos helpful, but I am far from comfortable with WeVideo right now. However, I plan to keep exploring so that I can eventually incorporate it into the media productions course. 

Do I recommend WeVideo? Yes, but give yourself some time to experiment with it before you introduce it to your students and colleagues!