Seesaw = Digital Portfolios of Progress!

The chromebooks have arrived!

Download for free!

Now that we are a 1:1 school, I can use technology any time. No making deals with other teachers, so that we can have the laptop cart. No searching for the cart that I did check out. 
So much to be thankful for!

Recently, I shared my initial impressions of Seesaw. Well, I was clueless! Since then, I've learned that anything shareable, can be shared on Seesaw.

I have printed my class QR codes to give to parents at conferences. As long as they have an iOS, Android, chromebook, or any computer using Firefox or Chrome Browsers, they can stay up to date on their child's work.

Other reasons for my love of Seesaw:

• Seesaw has student activity ideas. I will be using a few of those, so that my students can get comfortable with uploading their own work. I've been a bit of a control freak until now.
• Teachers can flag work. I have flagged a student's work that I want to share at her Annual IEP Review, this week! I don't want to be distracted by work that we have already discussed.
• Students can share to Seesaw from Shadow Puppet Edu, Haiku Deck, Storybird.com, ChatterPix Kids, and Total Recall!
• Simple to monitor IEP goals, without pulling students from grade level instruction
• Students can snap pics of their work. Then they can add text, drawing or voice, before sharing to the class journal.
• Your class can even blog, connecting with a global audience!
• If you are feeling especially proud of your students, you can tweet their work. Seesaw's posts remove all personal information, so that the students' anonymity is protected.
• Free!
• No Passwords!
• Promotes strong communication between home and school.
• I still love it most, because it is a portable, organized way to share multiple students' Portfolios of Progress!  

Bye, bye paper!

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...

New Haiku for Vocab and the Students' Storybird Books!

Unit 2 Week 4

I spent 10 minutes making the above vocabulary presentation. Even though we've been working on these words all week, the kids enjoyed a different representation of each word. It's also good for them to see meaningful sentences written differently than the ones that come with the curriculum. I'm wondering if I can put this into Nearpod to make it more interactive...

These stories were written after planning their beginning, middle and end with illustrations. I was impressed that J.K. who has autism and a very hard time with language was taking his time. He was asking for feedback and using it! I think he took pride in making his own book. This took him two weeks to complete. Whereas K.K.'s was done in about 45 minutes. ;)

J.K.'s Story

I'm having so much fun learning how to use these new sites and apps. My fear is that I will not continue to stretch myself once this class is over.