Proficiency with Technology 2019-20

September 12, 2019

I am very excited to be using Seesaw as a platform to both communicate with parents, and as a means for students to write their growth story throughout the year. The transition to Seesaw from Edmodo has been very smooth so far and parents have been active in contact me through Seesaw. Students have had very few issues in being able to post on Seesaw since many of them used it last year in second grade. Our team worked together to create some Seesaw agreements such as having a goal for students to make 2 posts for each subject prior to the first Growth Story Conference.

The main challenge so far has been trying to conceptualize, what to share before conferences vs. what to share with parents during conferences.

December 10, 2019

The use of Seesaw this year has been going extremely well. Students have been reflecting on their work at least once a week. I have been creating activities that provide students with prompts, structure, and templates for their reflections. I like how the activities on Seesaw make it very clear which students have completed the activities and which ones have not. It is very easy to refer back to these activities. Having student work and reflections saved digitally is SO MUCH more convenient than assignments on paper. 

I have been sending out weekly Seesaw posts to parents including photos and feel that it is an effective format for not only weekly parent announcements/news but also a great tool for parents to communicate with me. Most parents use Seesaw to contact me although some still use email. Seesaw has become the primary communication tool for parents. 

Something I would like to improve regarding my use of Seesaw is remembering to organize activities into subject folders. I began implementing this practice at the beginning of the year. Barb Wilson had advised me that organizing into folders was very helpful. Unfortunately, I have been forgetting to add activities to the appropriate folders. I wish that it was a bit easier to transfer all student activities into a folder after they are completed. 

Another goal for Seesaw would be to offer students more choice in their learning reflections. Since I am striving to have posts for all subjects, I have chosen the subject and topics for reflections during the first half of the year. I would like to offer students more choice in the future.

March 2, 2020

I have continued to allot time each week for students to reflect on their learning. We do reflection posts at the end of math units which ask students to compare their pre and post-tests and make note of areas they have improved and ways that they can continue to grow. Students are asked to do something similar at the end of writing units by using writing checklists to self assess their pre-writing on demand and then use the same checklist to score their post writing using a different color.

I created a series of reflection posts leading up to Student-Led Conference. One activity was titled How have I grown as a reader? Students were asked to identify three ways they've grown as a reader and provide evidence to support their claims. They then wrote about one of their favorite books from this year and recorded themselves reading a part of the book.

I also created a Personal, Social and Emotional Reflection for students to consider which of the 4C's and Vision of a Learner Traits best describe themselves and provide evidence to support their ideas. They also were asked to take a selfie with some of their friends.

A key realization about using Seesaw as a tool to share growth and learning during Student Led Conferences was that there was no reason to approve all of the students' many posts BEFORE their conference. I was planning to approve all posts the morning of SLC, however, I realized that by doing so, parents with afternoon conferences would be able to view their child's reflections early in the day before coming to school. I decided it would be more effective to approve/share student reflection posts at the end of the day AFTER they had shared with their parents. This to me made more sense than posting prior to conferences. This would allow parents who were unable to attend conferences to see their child's work the same day.

May 5, 2020

At the beginning of the year, while I was excited to use Seesaw as a new learning tool to document and share student work, I would have never predicted that it would become such an essential survival tool for teaching this year. I am so thankful that our school has adopted the use of Seesaw this year and feel that its use has GREATLY contributed to our preparedness for teaching virtually these past many weeks. Delivering video lessons and learning activities to students has been extremely easy as a result of our experience with Seesaw this year. 

I have been planning Mystery reading lessons for our third-grade students and have found that creating the lessons and sharing them with students and other teachers has been seamless. I really appreciate the ability to schedule learning activities on Seesaw to be assigned to students on a particular date and time. This allows us to set up in advance all of the activities for a week to roll out on the correct days. This allows us to avoid needing to assign all of the activities each morning. I greatly appreciate this feature. 

Also, Seesaw makes it very easy to track student work by allowing to easily view who has and has not completed each learning activity. This also makes it simple to go through each activity to leave comments and feedback for each student. A nice commenting feature is that teachers can leave an audio response to student work. 

I have been very fortunate to have an extremely high rate of student engagement and activity completion during virtual learning. Most of our students have been completing ALL learning activities nearly every day. I believe it has been a well-organized format that allows students to clearly view each day's learning engagements.

I have made a great deal of growth this year in learning to use a new online learning platform--from creating and sharing activities, to communicating with parents and students, using Seesaw to collect data for grading and reporting, and now using it to deliver instruction online for many weeks. It has been a wonderful journey and I credit the use of Seesaw as a major reason for the great success we have experienced with our students while making the difficult shift to virtual learning.  I have grown very comfortable and confident using Seesaw as have my students. I cannot imagine our virtual learning without Seesaw.