The Pro, the Con, and the Annoying Hey there! A little while ago I had written a post about using SeeSaw in the music room. At first, I was quite apprehensive about it. It seemed incredibly overwhelming and just one more thing to add on to my already-full plate. It’s been three months and we starting November so here’s a quick SeeSaw update in my music room. I’m . . . Surprised Yep, I’m surprised. It’s easier to manage then I expected. I have recorded several games and activities happening in all my classes and have posted them. However. . . it didn’t seem to make a difference for the parents one way or another. I thought I had done some really cool things with my students. Maybe that’s just the nerd in me? I somehow got stuck in one class. By that, I mean I find way more opportunities to take pictures/record in one specific class because all of the students work together, work diligently, have appropriate behaviour. When this happens, I find myself with a little bit of free time so I think “hey, they candle me taking a photo for ten seconds” and now I have a full album of just one class. Many of my other classes only have one event documented, so I have to figure out a system to keep track of who, what, and when I’m documenting. A Pro One thing I really enjoy about SeeSaw is the direct communication I can have with parents. It is so much easier to send a direct message as the parents will have entered their prefered method of communication rather than what they had on the initial registry of their kid. PLUS they have the app on their phone, which means notifications are enabled. I can have a conversation with a parent about their child in real time. It’s crazy! I never thought I would need to do that as a music teacher, but the more convenient it is, the more I’ve been using that function. It keeps time stamps too, which is awesome for contact logging. It is a great time saver. Instead of sitting down, logging into my PowerSchool, figuring out which of the cryptic classes are labelled as what, then find the student, then finding the parents contact info, flipping that into my work email, and then writing out everything that happened. . . that can be a solid 20 minutes of prep time. The Con My biggest pet peeve is that I can only have a certain amount of sections registered. As an early years specialist, I have 15 sections. The app only lets me have 10. However, it seems to be that there is not limit to students within the class. Which may be a last resort, but I don’t think it would be effective if the parents know they are sharing a channel with multiple sections of students. The Annoying Part I don’t know what the protocol is where you are reading this, but in my corner of Canada, students can enrol and exit school at any point in time. Even though we are three months into the year, we’ve had four new studdents in the last week. I get it, life happens and for some of these families, I am happy they have the opportunity to move to a safe country. In saying this, new-comer families don’t have the access to the tech or have the knowledge to opperate the app. To add a student to a section without those details is difficult. There has to be a way. . . Anyways, that’s my quick SeeSaw Update. I’d love to know how the app works for you in your music room!
