Seesawed at an IEP Meeting

I could not be more pleased with how easy and convenient Seesaw is to use! I have been putting if off, because I thought it would take time to figure out. Wrong! I looked at it after work and was using it at an IEP Meeting in the morning!

All you do is add your students and start uploading their work! With a few touches I was able to show parents the improvement their child has made in math and writing. You can upload documents and include links to work students have done on-line, such as Storybird books and Shadow Puppets.

There is so much more, such as the ability to share student work with other students and to invite parents to view on-line. I want it for organizing data to share with parents at meetings.

Folder portfolios are not too cumbersome, but this is less to muddle around with and it's technology. Gotta stay with the times, ya know!

The Good, the Bad and the Pretty

The Good

Engagement

My small groups are loving Nearpod! When my Haiku vocabulary lessons, and Touchcast and Powtoon videos were integrated with Nearpod, my lessons were infused with "Woah! What just happened?" and "Cool! Is that your voice, Mrs. Michalski?"

Concentration~
He was the star of the lesson!

It was nice to be able to share student examples anonymously, in order to discuss what could be done to make them better and what was done well.

I particularly enjoyed how careful they were to edit their sentences, before submitting them to be viewed by the group!

I shared two Haikus on Meaningful Sentences and the Powtoon video on prepositional phrases with the classroom teachers. Two of them used everything I shared. This has been an exciting adventure; more engaging for myself and students than I expected.

The Bad
My Touchcast was pretty bad! I was tired and slow at using the app, and it showed in the lesson! I will definitely use it again, when I'm more alert.

Another bad experience is currently with ShadowPuppet. One of my reading groups worked hard on a readers' theater. They practiced reading with expression, took pictures of the illustrations and marked up their parts, so that they would be able to pass the iPad around to each other efficiently. Alas! the microphone is not working in the app. I get a message that says the mic is being used by another app. Blasted! I have closed all apps, checked settings for sound and for ShadowPuppet.edu; even restarted the iPad. No luck. Honestly, I will go into a depression, if I cannot use ShadowPuppet any more! Help 880j!

The Pretty

Students' First Map
~below grade level

Total Recall is a great app for reading comprehension and recall. An unexpected benefit of using Total Recall is that a student who has terrible speech patterns and intense stuttering, made an enormous effort to think carefully and focus while verbally filling in his bubbles! I was not prepared for how motivating it would be for him. He is not self-conscious at all about his speech, so he will stutter and blurt out frequently. He quickly learned, without feeling judged, that he simply will not be understood unless he slows down and forms the sentence in his mind before saying it aloud. Also, the maps are pretty!

Remember how cautious I was at the beginning of the semester? No more. I've embraced the technology I've been exposed to. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.

Students' First Map
~far below grade level

The next maps will be more complex. I think I will present them with the first bubbles that they can edit, and let them take it from there; something like this...

Follow Up: It worked beautifully! Here is the students' finished map...