Seesaw

I LOVE this app and have been using it for 7 years. I was so excited when they said they were merging class and family into 1 and updating. The update is awful with messages though. I am a kinder teacher and it used to be so easy to find and message parents for my class. Now I have to jump through a ton of hoops to even create a message. I can’t just scroll through parent names of my class to send a message I have to actually know their names and search which often times in the beginning of the year I don’t off they top of my head. I have parents emailing that they can’t write a message to me or reply. They used to easily be able to just type under any message I sent and it would go privately to me. I have watched the video on this over and over but it doesn’t match what they see on their end. I love the idea of group messages but the rest of this is garbage. I was also hoping families would be able to add to their children’s journal since they help with the homework at home. Now they are having to log between student and family accounts. I hyped up this app to my families like I do every year but they are frustrated and not impressed this year. I hope they rework this or go back to the old user friendly way or we may have to find another program.

I really love how engaging Seesaw is for the kids and how many options they have to show their work. The ability to add voice instructions to assignments are very helpful, especially to us who work in Hawaiian language immersion. I wish Seesaw had a resource for behavior-management like ClassDojo, where they accumulate points depending on their behavior. If there was some way this platform could incorporate that, that would make this app the BEST! The “Skills” resource is extremely valuable. That is what separates Seesaw from the rest, being able to give the students quantifiable and qualitative feedback on specific standards. This Is the second time i am writing a review and I still wish that seesaw would add a behavior management resource to show the children and parents how they have been behaving. I do appreciate some of the updates made to editing and creating activities. I would appreciate if the activity didn’t change so much when I create it on my laptop to when the students work on it on their iPads. The dimensions differ I imagine and then certain text boxes move

I teach 1st grade, and I love the way that Seesaw allows my students and me to share what is happening in our classroom. My students are able to record their voices, take pictures of their work, and share their thinking with me and with their families via Seesaw. It is also a really fast way for me to communicate with parents. I use Seesaw to send out my weekly class newsletter and to send out last minute announcements, as well. Great way for teachers, parents, and students to stay connected! Also, it is a great place for teachers to share things with each other. I use so many assignments from the community of teachers on Seesaw to advance the thinking and learning in my classroom. The only thing I wish were different about Seesaw is I wish I were able to assign things just to certain students instead of to the whole class. It would help me differentiate my assignments better. Maybe there’s a way to do that and I just haven’t figured it out yet... 🤷‍♀️ Not sure. But overall, Seesaw has been such a neat tool and resource for my classroom!