You might say that Seesaw isn’t really a ‘rising’ resource because it has already risen pretty high in the education world. On the other hand, we could argue that it definitely is rising—still rising—and still making a huge impact on teachers and students. With ISTE 2019 going on this week, we thought we’d take a closer look at one of today’s most popular classroom tools in Seesaw. Seesaw is essentially an application that allows classroom teachers to gain greater insights and organization when it comes to their students’ progress. It’s also free and a great way for students to demonstrate their learning. Keep reading to learn more about Seesaw and the impact it can have on student achievement!
The more teachers know about their students, what they know, and the ways in which they learn, the more effectively they can guide them. Seesaw helps educators create custom student portfolios and profiles for tracking their work and progress. It also provides insights into how each student performs on formative assessments, which allows educators to tailor their instruction based on the feedback they receive, and it provides a quick way for teachers to connect with parents to share updates and progress through in-app communication.
Seesaw helps create very flexible learning experiences for students since each one of them learns best in different ways. It’s designed to unlock a great amount of freedom in the work that kids do while still showing their teachers that they’ve mastered the most important concepts. Kids can use the various features within Seesaw to draw, record voice memos, take videos, and more, using each of these features to demonstrate what they’ve learned in their own creative way. If they don’t like speaking, for example, they can draw something out and, if they’re not good at drawing, they can record a video of themselves explaining things verbally!
Using Seesaw, teachers can quickly begin to understand their students’ tendencies, strengths, and the areas they might need improvement in. It provides them with real-time feedback so that teachers can differentiate their instruction as needed and make sure each student is able to use the technology at his or her own pace. This feature and many of the others that come along with Seesaw help inspire some serious personalized learning in the classroom.
The other insanely useful component of Seesaw is the communication that can take place between teachers and parents. Educators can show parents the work their children are doing and, more importantly, celebrate their success together. Of course, it can also be used to inform parents on anything their kids might need to improve upon so that they can be aware or set aside some time to practice at home. Parents can access this feature using the Parent and Family app, which they can download on their own device or use on the web.
After progressing through all of their work, students and teachers can then create individualized portfolios right in Seesaw. Here, students can store all of their best work and access it in an easy way. Helping to build student agency, the portfolio feature is a great way for students to boost the pride they have in their work and share the things they’re most proud of. With this feature especially, Seesaw is an exceptional application for helping to create a strong sense of community within a classroom or school!
Those are just some examples of how teachers and students can use Seesaw to drive meaningful learning and reflection! To learn more about what you can accomplish with Seesaw and to set up a free account (there are paid options as well), explore their offerings more. And, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for a lot more information on the trending topics in education. After you do that, check out our online store as well to start shopping for all your EdTech needs in one place!