SeeSaw – Easily Capture K-12 Student Learning in any Form

“My students are so excited to upload their work to their portfolio and receive comments and feedback from their peers, parents, and teacher all within a safe environment.”

Tama Trotti will be presenting the session “SeeSaw – A Digital Portfolio Management System” at the 2015 Teaching and Learning with the iPad Conference this November. Come join Tama and hundreds of other passionate educators at the original iPad educational conference November 12th – 14th in Raleigh, NC!

The days of bulky portfolios and photocopying worksheets are over! Welcome Seesaw! Seesaw is an online learning portfolio that empowers students to independently document what they are learning at school.

Seesaw gives students an authentic audience of their peers and parents, encouraging better work and real feedback.

With support for QR code login for younger learners and Google account integration, Seesaw works in any K-12 classroom and supports all platforms so it is easily accessible for everyone. Students capture learning with photos and videos of physical work, or by adding digital creations. Everything is uploaded and kept organized for teachers. Teachers can invite families to Seesaw so parents get an immediate, personalized window into their child's learning.

Seesaw will surely move your teaching in the direction of a more student-centered classroom.

Getting to Know (and Love) SeeSaw

I first stumbled upon SeeSaw last year at an Educamp gathering and was immediately hooked. I signed up my class, added students and away we went. I brought it to my colleagues and Assistant Principal and they were thrilled to see a curation of student work that could be easily handled by students, accessible for parents, and alleviate storage issues with bulky notebooks.

This year, we started on the first day of school, introducing the app to my classroom. My students are so excited to upload their work to their portfolio and receive comments and feedback from their peers, parents, and teacher all within a safe environment. Teachers can adjust settings as they see fit to do.

What makes this online portfolio even more amazing is that students can record, draw, and explain a topic they are working on. This is a great way to have a formative assessment on a learning standard and best of all, no paper.

I have found the children are so excited to record and explain their work. This is a wonderful experience even for the timid students who normally don’t raise their hand. They can feel safe and comfortable recording their learning. This is especially wonderful for my ESOL population. These students are writing and explaining steps to addition and subtraction problems, explaining the difference between proper nouns and common nouns to name a few ideas. This feature of the app has no boundaries.

The other fabulous discovery is I can upload a worksheet for a student to work on and they can edit and write on the document directly within the app. Imagine, no more paper!! I can add different worksheets to various students’ folders differentiating the learning and making their learning content more personalized than ever.

At the end of the school year, the class is archived. Seesaw is free for teachers and parents. However, if a school would like to have a student’s portfolio move with them from year to year, there is a fee for this and you will need to contact Seesaw directly for more information. If parents would like to continue to keep their student’s portfolio there is a storage fee for that as well and parents can sign up directly with Seesaw.

This app is fantastic for showcasing student work, keeping parents abreast of what is going on in the classroom, and having students be responsible for their learning journey. I cannot say enough of this wonderful app. Be sure to stop by my session on Friday, November 13^th at 11:30 to learn more great ideas and see Seesaw in action and start moving your students toward empowering themselves to document their learning journey.