Michelle Hart & Maria Umali
Introduction to Seesaw for Teachers
Seesaw is a platform for student engagement. It enables students, teachers, and parents or guardians to complete and share classroom work.
It enables students to showcase creativity and critical thinking through students' projects using various media like photos, videos, illustrations, drawings, text, links, and PDFs. Uploaded projects can be seen and appraised by teachers and shared with parents and guardians.
What is Seesaw for Schools?
Seesaw for schools lets students work on smart devices like iPad, Chromebooks, smartphones, and computer devices that are automatically saved online within the student's profile and are accessed by teachers via a downloaded app or client or through a browser.
Seesaw Family App
Seesaw Family App is a separate app that allows the parents or guardians to download and sign-up to access their child's continuing learning progress.
Translations Tools
Seesaw supports translation, allowing easy use and access for ESL students and families.
Seesaw Blog
Teachers can set up a blog, ensuring the students are using the platform relatively, enhancing digital citizenship skills. The blog allows peer feedback, likes, comments, and editing work on the blog itself.
How does Seesaw work for Schools?
Seesaw Progress
Seesaw for Schools enables students to track the progress of their work in real-time.
Teachers can use this feature to build and view digital portfolios for each student, which will automatically grow to add more content over time.
Teachers can send out differentiated assignments to students. All of which can be sent out to parents or guardians or added to the blog which can be private , in class or more public, to those who have the link.
What's New!
Seesaw Messages is secure which allow families. teachers, admins, and students to communicate across all devices in real-time.
It is easy to use, extract audience and conversation for your intended message.
It's collaborative, engaging and inclusive. Work together to promote learning and achievement anytime and anywhere. It engages with all learners and their families.
Seesaw Messages for Teachers
Seesaw Messages for Students
Seesaw Messages for Administrators
Seesaw for Schools vs. Free Seesaw Version
Plenty of extras justify the expense of getting Seesaw for Schools rather than simply using the free version.
All of those features are:
Bulk invite family messages
Bulk create home learning codes
20 teachers per class (versus 2 for free)
100 active classes per teacher (versus 10 for free)
Create multipage activities and posts
Save drafts and send back work for revision
Unlimited create, save, and share activities (versus 100 for free)
Schedule activities
School or district activity library
Customize and manage standards using Skills
Private teacher-only folders and notes
Schoolwide announcements
Admin-level support for teachers and students
School and district analytics
Portfolios follow students from grade to grade
More streamlined experience for families
SIS integration and centralized management
Regional data storage options
Pros and Cons
Seesaw is Amazing! I love using Seesaw because of the ease of use for the teacher, the ability for students to explain their learning in their voice, and how easy it is to communicate with parents. (Jennifer W.,2021)
Pros
I love the ability to communicate with families in real-time and share all the beautiful things happening in my classroom. I also love that even my youngest students can create short videos and add their voices to drawing to explain their learning.
Cons
This company listens to its users! The only suggestion I had would be to add more pages to each activity, and they already added that as soon as customers requested it.
It gets the job done but is not very user-friendly... (Melody E., 2022)
This program is great in that I can be informed of what's going on with my child's preschool, and I love that! I do wish there was a way to keep me connected to my child's schooling but be a little more user-friendly though! It gets the job done but gets a little annoying along the way.
Pros
My child's preschool uses this program to communicate to parents both in a class setting and also individual communications between myself and the teachers. I appreciate that I can directly communicate with my child's teachers. The teachers also post pictures and things they are doing in class - some posts just for me for privacy and others for the class! I love that I can "be a part of the classroom," so to say :)
Cons
The app itself is somewhat "clunky." The program's organization is poor, and you can see that you have notifications, but you have to click around to find out where the new items are. At times, I cannot get the push notifications to clear from my phone, and most recently, I stopped getting any notifications even though my settings are set to allow them!
References
What is Seesaw?
Edwards, L. (2021, May 28). What is Seesaw for Schools and How Does It Work In Education? TechLearningMagazine. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/what-is-seesaw-for-schools-and-how-does-it-work-for-teachers-and-students
Seesaw Logo
Download HD Socrative Seesaw Simple Mind Thinglink Quizlet Plickers - Seesaw App Transparent PNG Image. (n.d.). NicePNG.Com. Retrieved July 20, 2022, from https://www.nicepng.com/maxp/u2e6u2u2r5w7i1i1/
Seesaw. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved July 20, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/c/SeesawEdu
Seesaw Videos
Seesaw. (n.d.). YouTube. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/c/SeesawEdu
Pros and Cons
Seesaw Reviews - Pros & Cons, Ratings & more. (n.d.). GetApp. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.getapp.com/education-childcare-software/a/seesaw/reviews/