Seesaw App – Easy Student Digital Portfolios ad Resource Sharing (For the Classroom) (Lower Primary School) (How-To)

SEESAW by SEESAW INC.

•  iOS App
• 💵 FREE
• 🎓 appmylesson – For the Classroom

Enabling students to create Digital Portfolios is a great idea, but making this easy for a Prep student can be tricky. After looking at several ways to achieve this I came across Seesaw, and you know what? it does it all for me (well, mostly). It is also a great way to develop school students understanding of digital portfolios and the processes involved such as, recording ones work, annotating, collating sharing and more. As well as social features such as commenting on other students work. To begin to develop this skills in an easy and fun way in Prep is a great step to then develop in future years with different tools (move up to students creating and running their own blogs and websites by Grade 6 for example)

This is where I am loving Seesaw. It does all the heavy lifting and the developers clearly know their target market, young school children, and developed tools to work best with them. Things like automatically generating QR codes that a student can easily scan to log into their class, a camera that only takes a picture when it is held steady, or even little touches like the font used when a student types notes.

This is a great app, and the first to be part of my For the Classroom series of appmylessons. As such I have created a more in-depth How-To Video below and will no doubt be following up with more as I use this in my school.

Note: They have a separate app for Parents to use and follow their child. It can be downloaded here (all these details are on the automated handout that Seesaw will generate for your students)

How-To Video:

TEACHER BEST PRACTICE Ideas:

Student Portfolios: As you saw from the video, this app is perfect for students to begin developing a digital portfolio and for the teacher to share and comment on the student’s work. It also introduces students (in a safe, teacher controlled way) to the social aspects of digital use such as ‘liking‘ and ‘comments‘. The ability to easily share these portfolios with parents is also a great aspect for teachers, especially around report time!

Student Publishing: Another tricky aspect in younger year levels is students publishing their work, especially in environments where you may have 1 iPad between many students. Getting work from iPad to teacher has been tricky and expecting a prep student to remember an email address and password is a big ask. I have been using Seesaw as a way of students to publish and share their work easily with teachers. If they have been typing up a document they can easily add this to their portfolio and it can be read, commented on and printed by the teacher.

App Smash: Seesaw also has great links with other apps such as Pages, Book Creator, Art Programs and more. By simply using ‘open in’ in a lot of apps, it will take the piece of work and upload it straight in the Seesaw app and the students folder, ready to be approved by the teacher.

Explain Everything – Practise Letters & Handwriting, Resources Included (English, EAL, Languages, Mathematics) (Primary / Secondary School)

Explain Everything by MorrisCooke

•  iOS App
• 💵 $3.79
• 🎓 appmylesson – Specific feature & Lesson

Explain Everything is definitely one of those must have apps. Yes, it is a small cost, but the features it contains out number a bunch of other fully featured and far more expensive apps. What I like about it most is the freedom it has to enable students to be creators of content, not just consumers.

I will be coming back to this one many times now doubt, and for today I will be using it to show how you can use it with students to work on their handwriting and letter formation. You will also see the steps I do for this could easily be used for many other lesson ideas.

Overview:

My Explain Everything ‘Letters Template’

Explain Everything can do a lot, for today’s lesson I am going to focus on the annotating and recording aspect of the app. Students can draw directly onto the ‘whiteboard‘, use images and more, all the while it is recording the process. Then students have a video they can play back and explain to others. To aid in this lesson I have created a PDF that contains every letter of the alphabet (in a template that fits the dimensions of the Explain Everything workspace). By downloading this PDF and using ‘open in Explain Everything’ the app will automatically convert this PDF to a series of slides. Students can then practice their letters while recording their process. From there they can save and export a video of their work for teachers or parents.

Check out the video I made below to see all of this in action. All the resources for you to use are at the end of the post (including my Explain Everything Template, Letters PDF, and Explain Everything Working File)

How-To Video:

Resources:

Letters PDF (open this in Explain Everything)

Keynote Template (to make your own resources)

Lesson Ideas:

English: Well, you can see how easy it was to use this for letters. Why not try words, phrases and more!

Languages: Using a smilar templete, yo could ask students to trnaslate the word you have written down. As Explain Everything also records audio the student can also practice thier pronuciaotn.

Mathematics: You can put a series of Math equations on the page, students have to show all thier thinking and working out to find the answer, Explain Everything will record their thinking process.

SpeakaZoo – Practice English and Conversational Skills…with Monkeys? (EAL – English as Another Language) (Primary School)

Speakazoo by ToyTalk

•  iOS App
• 💵 FREE
• 🎓 appmylesson – Overview & Lesson Ideas
• 👪 Use at home with parents

Alright, another ‘delve into Daniel’s past’ story. You see, when I was a little kid I had a Yellow Dog Stuffed Toy, aptly named, Yellow Dog (I was very clever back then). Now I used to talk to this dog all the time, unfortunately it never talked back (except that one time, but I have been told after many therapy sessions that may not have happened). Speakazoo is different, using similar technology of the likes of Siri, Speakazoo has a series of characters that you can actually talk to, and they talk back! – How is this beneficial for education? well, read on.

Overview:

Speakazoo is a FREE app that presents the student with a series of animals in the wild. Each animal has its own personality (and ethnicity) and story to tell. When the student taps on the animal it will tell parts of its story, then it will leve a space or ask you a question. When you answer it almost instantly will analyse your response and talk back. For example, the Dolphin will ask you to cheer her on and say a certain phrase, if you do it right she will perform a trick. Other animals will ask things like your favourite colour or food and respond in kind.

Receive regular emails with the conversations your children have had with the app.

It really is a bit of a fun distraction, (the conversations are basic, but simple and fun) but I see its possibility as a valuable learning tool for our students that are new to the country and learning English. You see, a lot of our students practice their conversational skills in the classroom or playground but in a lot of cases they may not be able to do this at home. Speakazoo is a way that our young learners can keep practicing this important skill at home and there is also a great way for the teacher or parent to keep track.

Speakazoo (and all the apps that ToyTalk make) value your children’s safety and privacy (it is certified by the KidsSafe seal policy). Before using the app a parent or teacher needs to enter their email address. This will enable the app (remember it is actually sending the recoding off to a mass of computers, doing some crazy cloud computing, then sending it back to the device). The best part is it will keep a recording of all your conversations with the animals and email these back so you can listen afterwards.

So, a very interesting app that falls well into the category of having fun (and not knowing I am learning!)

How-To Video and Screenshots:

Lesson Ideas:

EAL (English as Another Language): As stated above, this app is really a extension of what is being done in the classroom. Ask students to practice talking with the animals at home or during class. At the end of the week we can hear back the conversations and see how we went.

App Smash: To add some creativity to the mix, combine with another app (such as Pages or SketchBook) and ask students to exaplin what thier conversation was about. This could be a story typed up in Pages or a piece of artwork in Sketchbook