More than just a digital portfolio!
Community Review for Seesaw
My Take
Seesaw is an amazing edtech tool! Definitely the most-used one in my classroom this year! Seesaw has allowed my students to complete more hands-on performance tasks to demonstrate their learning, compelled them to explain their thinking, which has given me more insight into what they know or any misconceptions they may have, and has made them more responsible for their learning because they know there is an audience beyond the teacher--their peers and parents. More importantly, using Seesaw has made me a more creative and reflective teacher. I'm constantly considering new ways the app can help me reach my instructional goals. I have shared many of my experiences using the app in my classroom with my faculty and on my blog and have even lead a training for my peers on the basics of Seesaw.
One critique I do have is that locating a group of posts from the same assignment is a little difficult. You can filter by folders (that you've set up) and by student name or by date in Calendar Mode, but there are no tags for specific assignments within folders if you wanted to quickly find a group of assignments. I've made a suggestion to add that option or other search feature in future versions of the app.
How I Use It
Originally I wanted to use Seesaw as a digital portfolio. And while I was so excited to digitally curate student work and for parents to get a glimpse of what we do each day in a way they haven't been able to in the past, Seesaw has become more than just a place to digitally display student work. I've expanded its uses in my classroom, including using it for digital assessments: self, formative, and performance tasks. For example, students can record themselves reading, and then listen to how they sound while reading the text to make sure they read correctly. I've "smashed" Seesaw with other apps, Chatterpix and Popplet, for students to demonstrate their knowledge of geography and place value. We've done multiple activities using Seesaw's tools for students to show their understanding of main idea and supporting details within the contexts of reading and writing.
Seesaw's potential doesn't stop there, though. More recently, I've used the web-based Seesaw site for showing exemplars on the fly. I quickly snap a picture of a good example of student work during an activity and show it to the class. Currently, I've been working on making our Seesaw feed more interactive and collaborative, where students and I comment on their work to give encouragement and constructive criticism. Next, I want to "assign" work through Seesaw, where students receive instructions through the feed and then complete the activities within Seesaw.