Introduction

Who can use it?

Since Seesaw allows uploading of several multimedia formats including text, image, video and audio, all of the subjects can be applied with this tool to help the students keep journals of their learning process each year. It's not difficult to notice that three parties are involved in, which are students, parents and teachers. At the same time, it's teachers' authority to decide whether parents can join in the process. Seesaw is more appropriate for students who are still in K-12 periods because they usually still not mature enough to protect themselves in the online world and their privacy can be well protected in Seesaw. However, for university students or other adult learners, Seesaw is not a choice for the reason that adults need wider audiences and they do have the ability to save themselves in the complexed cyberspace.

What is Seesaw?

Seesaw is a great asynchronous online communication tool which allows classroom teachers connect themselves with students and also parents. The tool allows students uploading their classroom creations such as a paragraph of text, an image with annotated explanations on top, a short video or an electronic painting to their online journals in Seesaw and then, their peers, teachers and parents can like or comment on those creations, which enable the online communications happen among the three parties. At the same time, the privacy of all these information is well protected within the tool since other people have no access to them.

How does it work?

Basically, teachers are the major manager of the whole learning process in Seesaw. They should create classes first and then involve all the students in. Students are provided with two ways of enrollment, one is through scanning a QR code, which is easier for younger kids and more suitable for classrooms with iPads. The other way is for students who can log in with their Google accounts, which is suitable for elder students and classrooms with Chromebooks. After that, students are able to upload multimedia documents to their journal in Seesaw but only can be seen by their peers after teachers' approval moderation. Teachers have the option to invite parents joining in the class by assigning handouts with a QR code or sending an invitation email. To protect the other students' privacy, parents can only view, like and comment on the works of their own kid instead of everyone's. Detailed tutorials will be provided in the page of Tutorials.