Okay, straight up, I LOVE technology. However, I am bad at it. Not to mention that it does not love me. BUT, I love it none-the-less. I discovered the advantages to using tech like most other teachers, through the pandemic. I worked in a division that provided Chromebooks for all of the students. We used the Google class platform and I fell in love! It was user friendly for myself and my students. At the time I was teaching Career Studies and Indigenous Studies. It opened up a whole new world of accessible resources and communication with experts in the field and first-hand accounts. I am curious to know how this will work as a specialist, hence my SeeSaw Experiment.
SeeSaw
I have never, EVER used SeeSaw. If you are unsure of what it is, SeeSaw is a communication app between teachers, students and parents (click the photo below to check out the website). All of my teacher friends use it and love it. Last year, I had the app, had the classes registered, but was incredibly overwhelmed for several reasons. First of all, SeeSaw only lets two teachers be admins for a class. In my school, we have several split classes due to our population demographic. Our French classes are combined so there are two teachers in those rooms. Our phys ed. teacher also teaches in a homeroom class, as well as some of our resource teachers. Last year, I requested to be an admin in their classes, but was only able to be a part of a few homerooms.
My Experiment for 2023
This year, I am trying to have each class in their own profiles. The challenge here is that SeeSaw only allows 10 classes. As a music specialist, I have 15 classes. I’ve thought about combining grade sections, but each upper level class has close to 30 students by the end of the year. Is it worth having 100 students plus parents having access? Is it safe? Does SeeSaw even allow that many registrants in a class? I will share my findings as I use it as a specialist for ~300 students.
Alternatives?
I have heard of a few different applications with similar interfaces. Do you have any recommendations or advice for a similar system? Let me know!