We had 12 early adopters. This was quite a large number but it was due to a high level of staff interest.
Too many early adopters can make planning-and-reflecting meetings unwieldy with too many voices for all to be heard.
Having our Team Leaders and Deputy Principals made for very full meeting rooms and issues for all to se the presentation screens.
Timing was an issue - it had to be the last six months of 2015 because we only discovered Seesaw part way through 2015; we were far to frustrated with our reporting system to continue it for another year; whatever we did with our school in 2016 had to be whole-school and had to be good enough to be able to justify doing away with our previous reporting and assessing system.
Because this was a trial, we limited it to five parents per early adopter room - except for one teacher who wanted to engage all her parents
This meant we had to continue with the comprehensive - time intensive, individual conferencing with students intensive - reports for all students
This in turn put considerable pressure on teachers to maintain the trial and complete the usual reporting process
Factor in stress, health, and family issues (including a large number affected by sudden deaths of family members) that seemed to strike a much larger number than would be expected, and the climate was not as conducive for all trialists as we would have liked
Of the 12 Early Adopters, one reached a point where they felt Seesaw was beyond being manageable with five year olds
This served as an indicator that we needed to be sensitive to individual situations and contexts
It also served as an indication that more one to one mentoring and support was needed
Reflections and guides from teachers utilising Seesaw for ePortfolios and Learning Story Journals with junior school and kindergarten children was accessed and used as support material
Our initial Learning Post expectations were too high - especially for the first year of implementation.
Enthusiasm for what should happen can sometimes over-ride the practicalities of what is manageable - our formalised expectations for postings for each level of our school will continue to evolve
It is important that staff continue to see the benefit, value, purpose, power and possibilities in this approach
It is important that parents continue to see the benefit, value, purpose, power and possibilities in this approach
It is important that learners continue to see the benefit, value, purpose, power and possibilities in this approach
It is important to ensure we regularly remind/inform parents of the value of their adding comments to their children's learning on Seesaw
We have spent time educating and informing parents on our work on Mindset and GRIT over the previous year. Lots of blog posts, Facebook posts and weekly newsletter articles have featured these topics. We have featured this message in our full school assemblies too. The feedback from parents has been encouraging.
We are purchasing additional iPads - mainly for our junior and middle school classrooms. Also a few additional ones for our senior school areas. The main addition for our senior school will be extra Chromebooks - which now have a Chrome Seesaw extension.
The reason for the extra device provision is that it will be vital to ensure collecting, collating, commenting on and communicating artifacts and learning samples and examples is as easy, simple and time-efficient as possible.