Seesaw is an amazing tech tool. This platform will increase student and parent engagement to really create a vibrant learning community that spans the bridge between school and home. I would like to suggest that we adopt it at our school to help our young learners be the best that they can be.
The power of this tool is that it aligns so well with UDL. It allows both teachers and students to really hone in on all three guidelines of UDL: engagement, representation, and action & expression. First, let me tell you a little about this tool. Seesaw was designed as a digital portfolio platform, but it really works as an amazing digital learning platform. Teachers can post an assignment to the class page. This assignment can be posted in many different mediums at once. An image, video, text, and audio can describe what students need to do. Then students can decide how to respond in the manner that works best for them. Students can post their learning on to their page even if it is not tied to a direct seesaw assignment. If students work together on a project, a post can be submitted to all of their pages.
Parents get invited to see their students page and can see their students learning. Parents are used to seeing the end result of the learning when their students take home their final project/assessment. With Seesaw, parents now get to see the building of knowledge as their student works through each scaffold of their learning. A classroom blog is also built into this tool for teachers to share out to the larger learning community.
Seesaw supports the engagement strand of UDL because it offers students choice in how they want to complete the assignment. They can choose to write in text, draw, respond in recording their voice, record a video, upload a file, or link to another website. This choice allows students to use their strength to demonstrate their learning. It helps eliminate barriers to learning and expression by allowing them to use the modality that works best for them. As Katie Novak says in her book UDL Now! , "Students love choice. Children and adolescents have little control over their lives, so they take it wherever they can get it. Even the perceived element of choice seems to increase student buy-in" (location 2023). Seesaw also allows students to work together in a digital space to help foster collaboration. It provides a safe place for students to self reflect on their learning. And it allows teachers to give on time feedback to students. Teachers can view each post immediately and give feedback and direction to further learning.
For the representation strand of UDL, Seesaw offers alternatives to visual and auditory information. In one post, teachers can add the information in many different modalities to help communicate the big ideas. And since all their learning is posted in one space, students can refer back to previous learning to activate memory and background knowledge.
Student choice in how they show their learning also fits the Action & Expression strand of UDL. There are many different modalities that students can choose. Teachers can assign a specific tool or let students choose. The paid version of Seesaw also allows teachers to grade on a proficiency scale so students can see their progress and set goals for themselves in their learning.
All students achieving high quality learning is possible and Seesaw can help us with this goal.
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