Seesaw released a major update a few weeks ago adding "Activities" to their platform.
Seesaw is always thinking about young students and the ability to differentiate. The activities feature allows teachers to assign tasks to their whole class, small groups, or individual students. They have included the option to add icons in the student directions, as well as a tool to record audio directions for students to follow.
Teachers can provide students with an example of the work that is expected and a template to work on. They can also tag the activity with a certain skill, and place it in a specific folder to help keep things organized. Finally, there are some activities already built in the Seesaw library which can easily be shared with students or customized.
This new feature can help with workflow for teachers and students, and gives families more information about the context of their student's work.
Interested in learning more about activities? Check out the resources below!
As always feel free to comment or contact me for more information!
I am starting my third year in my position as a tech integration coach, and I love my job! I get to work with all of our amazing K-5 teachers, and be a part of the awesome experiences they create for their student and families using technology. However, there are times when I miss having my own group of kids to work with. Watching our teachers and students participate in the Global Read Aloud this year has made me a little jealous of our classroom teachers! There are so many great ways that we can connect our students to others using technology, but the one that has stuck out to me lately is Seesaw Connected Blogs.
Seesaw all by itself is kind of life changing. If you are not using it in your classroom already, I highly recommend it! It is the easiest way for students to share their work with an authentic audience (their classmates and families). Not to mention you as the teacher can see and hear student thinking in ways that are impossible using a traditional paper journal.
The blog feature in Seesaw takes this authentic audience to a whole new level. From your teacher account you can connect your blog with other classroom blogs in your school or around the world. Students can post their work to the blog, and get feedback from peers in their own class or other classes. They can also see other students' work and make comments. This whole process might seem trivial, but think of the message we are sending to our students when we do this:
1. Your thoughts are important and others want to hear what you have to say. This can be so empowering for all learners, but especially those who may lack confidence in their ability.
2. Other people in other places share your thinking, or they have have a different perspective/option. The can be a great teachable moment about culture and about how we all have similarities and differences, and that's what makes this world great.
3. When posting online, it is important to think about your digital footprint. This can be tricky to teach unless we give students a place to practice being safe and respectful online. Check out this AWESOME presentation on teaching kids how to comment from @Mrssmithop220.
The best part of this is that it is EASY, safe and appropriate for our young students. Everything that goes to the blog is moderated, so all the work and comments come to you for approval. If you are looking for a classroom to connect with, check out this shared document where teachers add their blog information. You can also add yours so that others can find your class and connect with you!
It can be scary when you start to open up your classroom to the outside world, you want to keep your kids safe online, and you want to make sure that the tool you choose doesn't require hours and hours of maintenance on your part. In my option, Seesaw Blogs are the best way to create connections outside of your classroom. If you are looking for a tool for the Global Read Aloud or just looking to connect with other classes somewhere else in the world, you should definitely give Seesaw Blogs a try!
Check out the two videos below to get started, and as always feel free to comments below or contact me with questions.
Getting Started With Seesaw Blogs
How to Connect to Other Blogs
Please note: this video is a little outdated. The interface looks a little different, but all the features are still the same.
Seesaw made some changes over the summer, and now that we have Seesaw for Schools there are some other things that are slightly different. The screencast below will walk you through the new features and what you need to know to start the year.
If you want to create folders here are the colors that we have used for the last few years: Math- Lime Green Reading-Orange Science-Brown Writing-Grey Fun-Yellow Spanish-Red Music-Light Blue Phy-Ed-Black Art-Purple ELL-Aqua
There are lots of new tools available to teachers now that we have Seesaw for Schools (SE only). We will look at how to push assignments out to students, how to tag work with skills (or standards) and using the private teacher folder. We will also look at the built in blog, and explore possibilities for using the blog to connect with classrooms around the world.
Maybe you have heard of Seesaw, but never looked into it, or maybe you’ve set up your class on Seesaw, and you are thinking now what? This session will be dedicated to ideas on how this powerful app can be used in meaningful ways. There will be time to plan and collaborate, so be thinking about units or learning targets that your students will be working on in the coming weeks. If you haven’t set up your class, we will get you up and running and discuss how to customize the settings to make this tool work for you and your students.
Emily from Seesaw explains how to set up a teacher account. She points out some settings that you will want to consider before using Seesaw with students.
Since our school uses Google I would recommend choosing the "Sign in with Google" option rather than creating a new account. This way you can use your school email and password and have one less log in to remember!
In the video, she is using an iPad to create her account, but in my opinion it would be easier to do the initial set up from computer. This way when you are entering your student names you can easily copy and paste from a class roster, or you can still type in the names, but at least you have a keyboard.
The iPad app and the website look identical, so navigation should be the same regardless of the device you are using.
Seesaw is great for documenting learning, but how can you use it other than just pictures and videos? We will look at a handful of apps that allow students to use their creativity to show their learning in different ways. These apps are all kid and teacher friendly and allow students to easily put their projects into Seesaw.
