Exploring Seesaw

This week, I've decided to give Seesaw a try. I heard about it so many times that I wanted to see why teachers love it so much. Also, I've learned a lot from Ms. Dana Dembecks's presentation that it was a no-brainer to try one of the many tech tools she mentioned. One of them was Seesaw. Seesaw it's a great tool for students to keep a journal of everything that they do in class daily. Teachers can also use it to assess students' knowledge and skills by uploading or adding activities in Seesaw. Moreover, parents can even log in to Seesaw and see what their children are doing on a daily basis. 

Getting started with Seesaw wasn't hard at all. I think, overall, that the creators of Seesaw took a lot of things into consideration. They make it super easy for teachers to create an account and to help you immediately start by adding a class. Also, they give you tips and tricks on how to get started by sending you an email right after you created an account with them. The whole process of adding classes, getting the QR code or a code for my students was easy and flawless. 

I've included a picture below showing how Seesaw looked like after I created my account and I added 3 classes as well. 

 

As you can see, there is a little dialogue box coming from the big green plus sign. It's guiding you to add more activities, post something for students to do or see, etc. I love how Seesaw is constantly reminding you or helping you navigate through their website by adding some of these little boxes when you log in.

Another thing that I love about Seesaw is that you can click on the little question mark button located on the far bottom right corner, to ask any kind of questions you may have about Seesaw. I tried it and, oh my, I was impressed on how amazing it works. (I've included a picture of where to find the little question mark button below) 

Next, let me tell you about how I found a perfect activity for my students to do. I went through the "Activity Library" and they have tons and tons of already made activities for you do edit and start using right away. I've included a picture below for you to see how the "Activity Library" looks like.

You can search by "Grade" and "Subject" as well. It was pretty straight forward and easy to use. The only thing that I struggled with a little is that I couldn't find much for my English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students. They are in a weird position where they are all in English 11 but their English fluency isn't quite developed yet to start any kind activity that "regular" English 11 students would do. Thus, I found myself searching activities for Grades 6th through 9th. The library has so many great activities that it was hard for me to narrow it down to one! 

Finally, I stumbled upon this activity called "Book Snap." 

The moment I knew I wanted to use this activity, I added it to "My Library." You can edit it as much as you want. It was perfect for my students since they have to read everyday for 15 minutes and complete a reading response right after. I haven't tried it yet with them but I am curious to see if they love it as much as I do. I love that they can record their voices and this will help them with editing their reading response. It will also give me a chance to go back to their recording and take some notes as necessary. 

When I introduce this to my students, since my students are in high school, I will be encouraging them to use their Google Account to sign in and start using Seesaw that way. Seesaw recommends all students from grades above 4 to use their Google account to sign in so please keep that in mind when displaying the QR code. Another thing to remember is that the QR codes expire after an hour so you will have to keep getting a new QR code. I believe that Seesaw does that to keep students and teachers safe. However, if students use their Google account to log in, it wouldn't be a problem. They will only need the code to sign up for your class once.

I hope you enjoyed reading through my blog and please let me know if you have any questions at all. I will be trying Seesaw today or next week! I can't wait for them to use it and get some feedback from them. 

In summary, I truly love this app and I would truly recommend it to ALL teachers to try it. I would suggest that teachers should try it at least twice. I say twice because it is hard to get used to something new in the beginning but the second time you try it, I know it will be much better.

I have shared the activity with you below ("Save Activity"). It is a link that will take you to the activity and add it to your Seesaw account (if you have one). ENJOY and I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!