Seesaw As Our ePortfolio of Choice

The purpose of education is to allow each individual to come into full possession of his or her personal power. (Dewey, 1938)

As outlined in my blog on reporting to parents, we faced some serious problems. They could be summed up by looking at our core business - children's learning.

Presenting it; Sharing it; Moderating it; Marking it; Reporting it to Parents; while Addressing - the Digital Divide, and the Engagement Divide.

We realised traditional six monthly goal setting and reporting sessions were simply not good enough.

We researched and reflected and came to realise a digital ePortfolio offered the best solution to our many concerns and purposes.

From here we looked at a variety of ePortfolio solutions - Hapara; Storypark; KidBlog; Mahara; PebblePad; WordPress; Evernote; VoiceThread; Posterous; ScrapBlog; Wix; Carbonmade; Google Sites; Viewbook; DropBox and more.

We trialled Wix, Edmodo, Box, Splashtop, Educreations and Weebly at KBS and even attempted to create our own stand-alone system.

We trialled Hapara at WHS.

According to Teacher vision (http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/01/great-tips-and-tools-to-create-digital.html), portfolios can be divided into two groups : Process oriented and product oriented.

Process oriented portfolios tell a story about the growth of a learner. They document the processes of learning and creating, including earlier drafts, reflections on the process, and obstacles encountered along the way.

In many different ways, learners can reflect on their learning process: identifying how their skills have evolved, celebrating their accomplishments, and setting themselves present and future challenges.

Product oriented portfolios are collections of work a learner considers their best. The aim is to document and reflect on the quality and range of accomplishments rather than the process that produced them. It generally requires a student to collect all of her work until the end, at which time she must choose artifacts that represent work of the highest quality.

As a collective, we believed it was more valuable, appropriate and in keeping with Hattie that we opted for a combination of both but with an emphasis on Process.

This ruled out a number of the options listed above. We looked more closely at Storypark, Hapara, PebblePad, Evernote and Seesaw.

At an Apple Distinguished Educator conference with Dr Reuben Puentedura we met some teachers from Australia who had been trialling Seesaw. Their feedback and enthusiasm was hugely positive and encouraging. We investigated Seesaw and Storypark more closely, but in the end, Seesaw came out as the option that best met all our requirements.

We Saw Seesaw’s specific Advantages -

  1. Designed for juniors up to Use Independently

  2. Students have ownership of their own space to create and record what they learn.

  3. Students can add text and voice recordings to journal items to reflect, explain, and develop their academic voice

  4. We Add All Types of Student Work

  5. Seesaw’s own creative tools allow children to create photos, videos, drawings or notes.

  6. Add directly from many popular content creation apps (Shadow Puppet Edu, PicCollage, Book Creator, Explain Everything, iMovie, Skitch, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Docs, Pages, Drive, and more).

  7. The Kid-friendly camera only takes a photo when subject is in focus and camera is steady.

  8. Works with 1:1 or single classroom device, Seesaw seamlessly organises students’ digital and physical work in one place

  9. Empowers students as young as 5 to independently create and organise their work in a digital journal, develop their academic voice, and collaborate with classmates

  10. Facilitates parent communication with real-time notifications, giving them a glimpse of their child’s day and an opportunity to support learning at home and from home

  11. Student-driven updates give parents information between conferences and reduce the need for lengthy newsletters

  12. Organised by student and subject area. Accessible from anywhere, on any Smart mobile device or on the Seesaw website

  13. Short, visual updates actually get seen, and cross language and technology barriers. Seesaw supports SMS, Email, iPhone and Android parent notifications

  14. Supports our schools to meet our aim - Confident, Caring, Connected, Creative, Collaborative, Contributors.

  15. Supports our schools to meet the Ministry aim - “Students get to be informed, active participants in their own learning, … and they have a much better understanding of how they are progressing." Minister of Education, NZ, 2007

Having settled on Seesaw as our tool of choice, we needed an implementation plan...