Struggling to create videos that teach the lessons who would have taught in the classroom?
Seesaw is an amazing platform for all grade levels that encourages critical and creative thinking. It is also an amazing platform to navigate Distance Learning! With its easy to use interface, any teacher can assign, collect, and review work from students, even those in the primary grades. But it can also be used to curate and create scaffolded lessons, and allow a teacher to adapt their own lessons, record, and model for their students. With the ability to record messages, both video and audio, and communicate and connect with students, Seesaw tops other interfaces hands down!
This tutorial adds a little extra to your lessons with quick tips on little known capabilities. Take a look and elevate your lessons from good to great! Save time and effort working in multiple platforms and save time downloading and uploading to curate everything into one place. With Seesaw, you will be able to do all of this in little time in one place!
Note: While Seesaw offers a free version with most capabilities, a paid class subscription or school subscription is required for multi-page abilities.
Do you have a Seesaw trick or tip? We’d love to hear it! Comment below!
When we look at our students who have a level of comfort with technology beyond what many of us have, it can be challenging to remember that these skills are not honed or mastered, but natural and expected. We cannot make assumptions about our students no matter their age, ability, or often they use technology. The same goes for the ability to use technology effectively. Students do not come to school understanding the role of technology in education and are not naturally capable of integrating technology into their learning process. We must teach students how to use their understanding of technology and meld it with these three important skills in order to maximize learning in today’s technological world.
BE RESILIENT
While students have a clear and natural ability when it comes to using technology because of exposure since infancy, does not automatically mean they have a deep understanding of the applications and their use. It is our job to teach the students more than just what lies on the surface of technology. This does not come natural to those who have grown up with technology. Rarely do we sit down and really think through the purpose and possibilities of each application we use day-to-day. In fact, if an application is too complicated, it is often disregarded. Therefore, our students do not have the innate ability to think through problems that have simple solutions, this skill must be taught. With generations of students who are accustomed to simple solutions and instant gratification they lack the ability to construct clear and concise solutions to complicated problems. Teaching my students to go through the problem solving process and teaching them patience is an important skill to teach, especially when they are young. I personally teach my students that we must visualize what we want, create a plan, and then tackle the issue. When at first they don’t succeed, revisit the plan, adjust, and try again! The more they practice this, the better they will be when faced with an complicated problem.
BE AWARE
Students must also be taught how to effectively and responsibly use the technology they have already integrated into their social lives. While the ability to push buttons and successfully produce an item on various applications is simple to learn, the purpose of the product to do good in our society and world is not a natural understanding. Technology and the internet offer a world of opportunity and it is important we teach our students how to use this audience, these applications, and creativity to solve real world problems and make a positive mark on our world. Digital citizenship is the way that I keep my students digitally ethical. They learn how to positively represent themselves online, search appropriately, and use the technology properly. This is not a natural understanding for them, therefore clear lessons must be taught and it is never too young to begin this conversation!
BE THOUGHTFUL
In order for our students to use technology for good in our world they must first become problem solvers, critical thinkers, and most of all intentional learners. While a world of information lies at our students fingertips, they do not possess the ability to accurately learn from this world. They must be taught to be purposeful in their search, evaluate the credibility of sources, and analyze the information into a clear understanding. By teaching our student HOW and WHY we use technology, and HOW and WHY it is important to use it effectively, we are preparing our students to yield these powerful tools for the good of our future. Our students are bombarded with information, helpful and unhelpful. They must be taught how to collect accurate information and appropriately represent it. Once they have the skills to interpret information accurately, question credibility, and then use it to problem-solve and make decisions, they can learn anything!
My Appy Classroom 