Seesaw: The Learning Journal

Long awaited, and here at last! For the past couple of weeks I've been playing around with my classes and using the Seesaw app and website for all of my classes. At first my students were a little hesitant about having to find some free space on their phones to download the app, but eventually they came around to the idea.

Creating an account is super simple and making and joining classes is very easy, and when you finally get everything set up, there's an instructional video showing you how to use the program and features. I normally explain how to use the program in my blog posts, but I think you'll get more out of Seesaw if you play around with it on your own. There's so many different things you can do with it and I haven't been able to explore them all yet, so what I'm going to do for this post is explain the lessons I've used Seesaw for and then talk about how the students reacted to it.

One thing I will say is that you NEED to have students use their school provided email address, that way the students appear in the class as Bobby Robertson, and not as gthug69...
How I had them sign in

1. https://web.seesaw.me/  or download the app
2. Log in
3. I'm a student
4. Email/Google account
5. Student Sign in with google or G+ 
6. Allow access
7. Enter Join Code

The Assignment

After I created an account, built my classes and watched the tutorial video I created my first note.

Side note: I had my class settings to where all posts have to be approved by me, and where students couldn't see each other's work. That meant that if I wanted to upload something, I had to share it with all the students, which was easy enough. One problem that I ran into was that I made this note before I had any students in my class, so as students joined my classes I had to re-share the note with students as they joined the class. On all the future little projects we did it wasn't an issue.

Of course there was a little trial and error. Some students didn't have their phones, and the desktop computers we have in the room are slower than Christmas. One solution was to have them share phones but still have their own video uploaded. That worked well for the most part, but some students didn't listen and didn't sign in to Seesaw with their own account so I had to search through other students' folders to find their work. So if you have access to iPads or laptops then BRING THEM!!!

Once all the students got signed in and they got access to the assignment, they started creating their videos. Some of them were really good, but some were a little lack luster. The students need a chance to play around with the program to figure out how it works and how to properly make a video. I had some that were submitted upside down, there were some where students didn't allow access to the microphone and there was no sound, some tried to video and write at the same time and I got really bad close ups of the paper. It just takes trial and error.

After they did their first videos, I graded them and went back and left comments on all the videos and let them know where they went wrong or what they did right. The main feedback I got from the students is that they didn't like having to talk on camera, so the next assignment we did was long division where they didn't have to talk, they just had to upload a video showing all their work. They enjoyed this a lot more.

Next I had them play around with uploaded a photo of their work. Easy enough, no having to make a video, no speaking involved. They loved it, and it didn't take them long at all to realize they could type and draw on their photos also.

What I like about Seesaw:

• You can control who joins your class, and there is a way for parents to look at their student's work
• You can control what the students can see, and share examples with your classes
• You have the ability to approve or deny comments or submissions of assignments
• Students can submit an assignment in a variety of formats
• All work submitted is stored in an individual folder by student name so you can look back on it later
• You can comment on submissions to let students know how they did

Plickers

First thing: What are Plickers?!?!?!
A Plicker is a student specific QR Code that is used to answer multiple choices questions. The teacher controls the question being asked with the app on his/her smart phone, and then scans across the room with the phone to collect student answers.

Plickers.com has pre-made QR Codes that can be printed for free from their website. They come in different sized packages with a minimum of 40 unique cards. Just print out each card, and assign each of your students a number.

From the website you can upload questions and create your classes. To gather students responses though, you do have to download the app onto your smartphone or tablet. For students to answer they have to turn their QR Code a different direction with the answer choice they want facing up.

The "1" on each of the corners means that this is the QR Code for whomever is student #1 in your class, probably Austin Adams. Since the "B" is at the top of the QR Code, Austin is indicating that he thinks the answer to the question is "B". All you have to do now is have the app open on your phone and scan it across the classroom and collect your answers! Answers are saved online and you can look at the reports anytime.

Go to www.plickers.com to create your classes and download your QR Codes

What I like:

• You can create multiple different classes and assign each student their own Plicker number to gather data
• You can upload your own questions and move between which question that you are displaying from the app
• As you are scanning the class, student names will pop up and change to green if they got it right or red if they got the question wrong
• All responses are saved online and reports can be generated to look at later
• When you print out the QR Codes they come two to a page to save on paper (because we all know how quickly schools run out of paper)

How I use it:

In my ideal classroom, I would introduce Plickers on day 1. I would have printed out each code and have it glued to a folder for each student. I would have a few "Getting to Know You" questions made up to demonstrate how to use Plickers. After about a week or so of using Plickers to answer random questions, I would take the folders and fill them with sample questions from whatever standardized test you guys use (for me, it's the STAAR Test). Each day I would have students show their work and practice strategies in their folders, but instead of having to individually grade each folder I would use Plickers to gather responses as an Exit Ticket.