Like most things, I found out about Seesaw on Tweeter, where else, right? I am blessed to be connected with fabulous and amazing world language teachers via tweeter #langchat. So, in my typical fashion, I decided to research this thing called “Seesaw.” Here is what I found out:
- It is a digital portfolio used in elementary as well as secondary school.
- It offers a multitude of options for students to showcase their work: photo, video, link to a page, uploading documents, note writing capabilities, peer feedback, drawing and illustrating, and now a direct link from google drive.
- It is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! music to my ears 🙂
One of the challenges in the world language classroom is: How do I get my students to “talk” more without the stress of everyone watching them like hawks? Well, here you go, Seesaw has been the answer for me, at least for this year. I hear “recap” is also a great option. Something to look into for next school year. Here is how I have used Seesaw this year, all formative assessments:
- Short [40 seconds short] homework assignments in which they have to record an audio/visual recording, answering a prompt that I upload to Seesaw.
- Snapchats: short recordings and one sentence summaries that tells me whether they understood what we read, listened to, or worked on in class.
Why do I love it so much:
- It keeps a running record of the student’s progress throughout the school year.
- It is fun for the students to see/hear themselves use the target language and how they have progressed and feel a lot more confident to “walk on the wild side.”
- Parents have the option to connect to their child’s account and delight in hearing their child use the target language.
- I can give immediate feedback without having to “correct’ their pronunciation or grammar usage, in front of everyone else. For example: If the prompt asked them to tell me the name of the main character and their place of origin, and the student replied: Se llama es Enrique y es de donde Puerto Rico. I would then write them a note that says: Su nombre es Enrique y es de Puerto Rico – or – Se llama Enrique y es de Puerto Rico. Simple, short and to the point.
- I can upload an assignment by recording a video of myself talking to them in the target language.
- The student accounts are private – I see them, the individual student sees their work, and their parents [if they choose to.]
Seesaw works really well on smart devices but will also work on regular computers. The smart devices are awesome because it sends you a notification when an assignment is uploaded and registered.
Here are some examples of Seesaw:
nataliaenriquericardo 