5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Seesaw

A lot of teachers use Seesaw as an online journal, an e-portfolio, or a combination of both. This post should help those that want some tips on maximizing this excellent edtech tool.

#1: Seesaw Blog

This was already featured in a post we shared earlier, but it is one of my favorite ways to share Seesaw with parents.

The cool thing about the Seesaw “Blog” is that it doesn’t require any blogging. The amount of time I am putting into this very post is much more time than I have spent all year “blogging” on Seesaw. The Seesaw blog is more of a feed of the filtered things that you want to showcase to your parents. And you filter it with literally the push of a button. With one click, things that are on your regular class feed (that is consequently very busy and overwhelming to some parents) can be shared to parents on the class blog. Teachers with a separate e-learning platform can usually embed this feed to connect the two in an easy and attractive way.

#2: Portfolio “Folder”

Last year, our school piloted Seesaw as a replacement for our paper/pencil portfolio. It was much better, but one complaint that we had was that teachers actually wanted to use Seesaw for more than just a portfolio. That’s when we came up with the portfolio folder, which allows students to select the work that they want to be included in their portfolio, and also to filter other work out during student-led conferences. The photo above shows how one piece of work can be tagged as math and portfolio, and Seesaw allows students to filter their feed by either of these categories so that you can see just the portfolio selections whenever necessary.

#3: Flip Your Classroom

I can’t think of a tool that allows easier upload of videos than Seesaw, but few teachers take advantage of a “hidden” feature that allows you to flip your classroom with instructional videos.

All you have to do is:

1. Set up a new student, named after you.
2. Upload your instructional videos to this teacher student.
3. Make sure that you turn on the setting that allows students to see other students.
4. BAM! You have a place for students to watch instructional videos at home or in class. Pair this with a document camera, a marker, and a piece of paper and there may not be an easier way to flip your classroom.

#4: Tweet From Seesaw

Many teachers have got Twitter going, either with a teacher professional account or with a class account. With Seesaw you can easily share student work on Twitter and other social media. While students are working on uploading items to their Seesaw, you can tweet pieces of work to one of your school’s hashtags using your class Twitter account to share student learning and to build engagement from your community. Students need to be learning about how to use social media safely, and Seesaw is a great tool to do this.

#5: Print QR Codes of student work

Another great feature that is available to Seesaw users are printable item QR codes. These can easily be printed so that your students’ work is displayed around your school. Just print out a few of these (which all come with a visually appealing picture of the item in the center of the QR code), put them up on a bulletin board, and you’ve got a multimedia display that can be accessed with a device and a QR reader. Much more powerful and interactive than just printing pictures of student work.

I hope that these can help the new and seasoned Seesaw user to get the most out of the tool. If you haven’t already, follow me @MrZachG on Twitter:

Follow @MrZachG

And be sure to check out @SGroshell’s TPT.