Getting to know Seesaw

When I began using Seesaw last year, I didn't really understand much about it except that it was 'like Facebook but for kids and parents'. It was such a misguided response of which would not be my answer today. I liked how we could use it and the platform it gave the students for sharing their work. I never really delved too deep though and I'm kind of kicking myself for not trying more whilst I still had my own class.

It's now my second year of using Seesaw and my first as a specialist teacher (STEAM) and I am understanding the capabilities even more and starting to see a greater benefit. My team teaching partner and I have recently discovered
the versatility of 'Activities' and have already had some success. We have also begun to utilise the 'Skills View' component with great success. I've become the biggest fan yet feel like we are still only scratching the surface of what is possible in Seesaw. I have been educating myself by following #Seesawchat on Twitter as well as using the Seesaw Learning Library. There is a huge community of teachers out there that are sharing ideas regularly; Too many to share here. 

I really like that Seesaw can be anything the teacher wants it to be. If you want to save on photocopying, you can create templates within Seesaw for students to use. If you want to lead students to be creative and show their learning with text, pictures, videos, demonstrations, 'app-smashing', etc, you can certainly do that too. There is really no limit to what is possible here. I really like that I can upload documents straight from my Google Drive or approve students work or parent comments from my phone on the go. I am also learning how I can create interactive Activities for students where they can drag and drop different elements that I have placed in the template; this is early days for me though, so watch this space to find out how that one goes. 

I will no doubt write a lot more about Seesaw in the future as I delve deeper into it but in the meantime, here are some great examples of how we have used it this year (so far):

Posting student work

Checking Students prior knowledge

Communicating with parents

Using Activities for assessment

Using 'Skills View' in our assessment

Are you using Seesaw? If so, what is the best thing about it for you? Share your comments below.