Sra. Spanglish Tech Tips: Seesaw

Goodness knows I’ve done some experimenting with portfolio platforms. I’m pretty satisfied with the VoiceThread option at the moment, but when my Pinnacle amigo, @jkylewood demonstrated Seesaw (that’s web.seesaw.me NOT seesaw.com, by the way) after #langchat amiga @alenord had already been talking it up, I saw something broader than portfolios.

Now I can wax poetic on how portfolios are intended to represent an individual’s abilities to The World, efficiently and attractively–that is largely the reason I don’t see Seesaw as a portfolio tool. I mean, sure it collects the kids’ work in one handy place more simply and swiftly than even–dare I say it–Google Classroom, and it lets you sort it. But at the moment, it’s pretty much just for me to see…and maybe their classmates and parents (though I have been invited to “stay tuned”).

Here are some reasons you probably want to try Seesaw, too, even if you, like me, are married to the idea of published portfolios

Features

You can turn in just about ANYTHING in TWO CLICKS once you’ve got kids signed up for your Seesaw class. Photos, files, text notes, links, and even DRAWINGS. And there are FOLDERS, awesome, awesome folders. Now I can have students sort their files by the skill (reading/listening/speaking/writing) and/or assignment (coros, IPAs). And I can even peruse my calendar and go back to any date there were submissions and cruise through all of the class submissions for the day!

Maybe the Chromebooks need glasses?

Now you can make it so students can see each other’s responses (for inspiration) or so they can’t see them, in which case you can project them from your account for all to see if you decide you do want to share.

Also with Seesaw, no more nameless work: I had one kiddo turn in an excellent infograph last week…but no name. Fortunately, she’d snapped a picture of it and uploaded it under her name so I could match the paper to the photo! (We’re still in experimental phase, so I went ahead and took it up both ways–which is good, because the Chromebook pictures were way fuzzy a lot of the time.) Of course this is true of Google Classroom, too, but the folders are a little harder to navigate in Classroom and/or Drive, and the upload function is way more streamlined on Seesaw.

Wishes

First of all, I wish I could populate my classes myself. I get the attraction of the fifteen-minute code, and it did work fine for my classes for the most part. I just like having the rosters preloaded to save class time and to skip the dependence on students following an extra set of instructions.

I also wish I could select a bunch of submissions and add them all to a folder at once. It would probably half my sorting time if I could do that instead of clicking on each submission to add it to its folder(s) one at a time.

It would probably also half my IPA time on the interpersonal section if there was just a video capability. I mean, yeah, kids can post links if they use an online recording app, but iPad cameras are generally just the most straightforward way to go. But the posting videos to Classroom takes FOREVER, especially with partners sharing. In Seesaw, you can just tag all the students in the video!