About ten years ago during a training, an instructional coach mentioned an app called Seesaw. I took note and checked it out later. It’s a digital portfolio for students which allows interactions between the student and teacher. It also allows interaction among peers and family members. Visually it looks like a social media platform with a wall where all of the latest posts from the class land at the top of the page. Parents, teachers, and even peers can comment and like posts. Students can take pictures of their work, they can record audio, take video, draw pictures with voice over, or upload documents. Their website states, “Seesaw connects teachers, administrators, students, and families to support each child’s learning journey from PreK through 6th grade” (https://seesaw.com).
When I took a look at Seesaw my eyes went wide; I was so excited about what I saw. I thought I would finally have a more effective way to keep portfolios for my students. Portfolios are nothing new to the world of early childhood education. Research has long shown that effective early childhood programs should use authentic assessment tools such as portfolios. “The assessment of young children is most accurate and useful when it is based on observations of children’s development and learning over time” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009, p. 47). “Portfolio assessment provides a systematic way of observing and recording children’s development over time.” (Grace, 1992, p. 2). Long before digital portfolios, early childhood teachers have kept hard copy portfolios to document student learning. However, it’s quite the endeavor, it takes quite a bit of storage space, and often times students don’t want to part with their hard work. It’s difficult to keep artifacts that the students are so excited to show their parents. Furthermore, it takes some serious effort as the teacher to refer to the portfolio and use it to inform instruction in an ongoing way. Thus I was fascinated with the idea of digitizing everything.
I have to admit that at first I assumed that the students would not be able to use the app themselves. My four year olds knew how to use iPads and even desktop macs in the classroom. Yet for some reason I thought this would be too complex. My plan was to document work on my own. This way I could document anything whether it was a piece of work the student created and wanted to take home or whether it was a playdoh creation that would soon be smooshed and shoved back in a can. However, once I started to document student work I realized how incredibly easy it was, I realized that the students would definitely be able to use this tool themselves with just a little coaching. Hence, I trained each student how to use it every day for a few days when they were with me at the teacher table. Once they finished, whatever the work was, it didn’t matter the content, I would have them take a picture and upload it as practice. After I was confident that everyone had a working understanding of how to use it, I started to put iPads out at different centers where students could use it on their own to document their work. What happened from there blew me away. The kids loved documenting their work and they were the ones doing it. I had put learning in their hands, and they took off with it!
From there, all kinds of strategies emerged and new possibilities kept opening up. Not only did it shift the way learning was happening in my classroom, it transformed the way I managed components of my day. It was like having another teacher in the room.
References
Copple, C., & Bredekamp, S. (2009). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8 (3rd ed.). National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Grace, C. (1992). The portfolio and its use: Developmentally appropriate assessment of young children. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.
Seesaw Learning. (n.d.). Seesaw learning platform. https://web.seesaw.me