 Oh, and welcome to today's Wednesday webinar. My name is Tina Salzer, and this video is gonna be the first in a series of videos on seesaw, using seesaw in your classroom. Many of you have probably already heard the term seesaw and just may not be familiar with what it is. So seesaw is actually a digital portfolio tool that is, the free version works just fine, but there's also a paid version. But basically it's a place to collect not only digital artifacts, but physical artifacts as well. For instance, a student could take a picture of an art project that they created, upload it into seesaw and record their voice over that art project explaining what it is. It's also a place where a student can create and upload their own artifacts into their portfolio. So the student has the ownership of their own portfolio and what goes in there and knowing that their parents are gonna see what's in there. So hopefully it makes them try a little bit harder as well. But it's also a great parent communication tool. You as the teacher can invite the parents to join their student's portfolio in your seesaw class so that when the student uploads an artifact, their parent gets only their feed for what they've uploaded as soon as the teacher accepts the upload. And it's a great tool to use during conferences for parents to go through their student's portfolio with them. And also it's a great communication tool for the teacher to the parents. Say for instance, at the end of the day, if the teacher posts what the students were working on for the day, the parent would get that post on their seesaw account as well. And if your children are like my daughters and you ask them how their day was and everything was fine and good, but you can't get any details out of them. Well, with this communication tool, the teacher could post what they were working on for the day and you could follow through on that at home. So let's go ahead and jump into and take a look at seesaw here. Okay, now let's take a look at seesaw and some of the things that it has to offer for you and your students. First of all, when I log into my account, I should see, I see my name up here and then underneath my name actually have two classes set up. For me, I have one practice class set up that I have my daughters that I practice with. And then I have another class that I use as a training class. You also can see your students right over here in the right hand side. And this plus sign is where you go at all of the different features. And so I'm gonna click on that because I wanna show you some of the things that you can upload into seesaw. First of all, you have the option to upload a photo. You could do a video recording. You could do a drawing. You could upload a file from your computer. You could type in a note, which I use for communicating with parents, or you could insert a link. So those are the options you have and I'm gonna show you what some of those look like here. So as an example, this is a note I typed in that I shared with everyone, which would include the student feed as well as the parents. And so basically what this does is it tells the parents what we focused on for the day. And I don't know if your preschooler is like my preschooler, but if I ask her at the end of the day what she did that day or what she learned that day, it's always, I don't know. So this way, the teachers can communicate that with the parents and the parents get that in their email and they show that there's an update to the Seesaw class and they can go in here and read that. And so when the kids get home for that day, you have a talking point and you can ask your children about what the teacher stated they did for the day. And that is one of the note features that I typed in on a note. Another feature, as I mentioned, is the drawing feature, which I used with my daughter. And basically what she did is I had her recreate a letter and then she drew a picture of something that started with that name and she recorded her voice telling about what that picture was. So I'll let you listen to that here. And so that's a great way to use the drawing feature. And here's another letter that she did to practice. And then this example I used with my other daughter, I pulled in a picture or an image and then I had her tell about the image. So that's another way you could use that. And then this example is actually my daughter, she drew a picture so you could use this for an art project and she created a video explaining what the art project is or explaining what is in the picture. And you can get the idea from there, but basically this is a great way to pull in two-dimensional projects or creations that you do within your classroom. Here's another example of how I used the note piece and then had my daughter read the text that I typed in. And I thought a great way that you could use this is within parent-teacher conferences, I could have her record her reading this sentence at the beginning of the year, then I could have her record it again at the same sense, at the middle of the year and then again at the end of the year so it could show her progress with learning words and learning how to read. So this is an example of the same type of thing. And again, you can pull in images, videos, pictures, just about anything you can think of and then you can apply that to your student's portfolios which at the end of or during parent-teacher conferences you could share just that student's portfolio. And when you invite the parents, the only item that the parents get is what their children share or what you share with everyone. So that is a good example of some of the things that you can see or how you can use CESA in your classroom. Now, to get started with CESA, you first have to create a class, excuse me, sign up and then create a class. So if you type in CESA.me, it will take you to this page and so you're gonna say sign up free. And this is where you're gonna tell them that you're a teacher. And you put in your first name and your last name. I'm just using make believe account right now. So you put in your email and set your password. And then CESA is great at creating and hosting a lot of tutorials to walk you through each step as well. So as soon as you get into that class, it's gonna ask you to create a class name. And so I'm just gonna call this practice class one. Now, the important part is that if you continue to use these throughout the year in the class name, you may wanna include the year so that you don't get confused when you start incorporating this throughout the year. And then you also have to select the grade level for that class. And I'm just gonna choose third grade for now. And then you get to choose how the students can sign in. If your kids do not already know and have their email addresses and passwords that your district provides, the easiest way to do it is to have students scan a QR code. And then you get taken to an area where it asks you to enter your student name. If you already have a list, you can click here where it says paste a list of your students and you just copy and paste them in. I'm just going to enter a few students in here. And you might wanna think about how you enter them by name. Most of the time it's okay just to enter in my first name. And I'm just gonna add a few here so you can get the idea. And you can always go back, you can always go back and add more students in as you need to. Now it's creating my class for me. And once I get in there, it shows my name, it shows the class that I created. And then it assigns the students an icon to go with their name. So if I click here on manage students, I can change that icon to be one that they choose. But that's a way, for instance, how I allowed my daughter to choose the cow as her icon. So she always knew that she selected the cow when she uploaded images. Now I wanna show you how you can go into your classes and manage different settings within the class. You can manage the name of the class or you can change the name of the class. You could change the grade level. You could also invite other teachers to your class and to have access to your class. The students, you can share how the device or how the class is shared. You could share it based on class code. You could share it, and this says share devices. You can base it on just one-to-one devices with a class code. Or if your students are older and already have email accounts, you can share it out via their email accounts. You could also easily add additional students right here. And when you add the students, you get to add the characters if you chose the lower grade levels so that they can easily identify who is theirs. You can set if the students can like other students' posts and you can set if they can or cannot comment on their other students' posts. You can, if you shut this off where they can't see other people's work, then of course they are not allowed to comment or see any of their other students' works. This I have turned on because anything that is uploaded into Seesaw requires that I approve it first before it gets posted directly online. That's a great tool because that way you can make sure the right students have posted the right information and have put everything in the appropriate place. You can turn this on to allow students to edit their artifacts after they have uploaded them. This is where you can allow parent access. And if you click where it says invite parents, it will give you a handout for each parent in your student's class. So each parent gets a unique QR code or address to link to their account that is only specific to their students. This, if I click on this, if I had sent out parent approval to join the class, this would tell me if there is any that have not accepted. This is where you can also shut off or turn on parent likes and parent commenting as well as the sharing. You can enable a class blog where students and you could blog right on Seesaw. Within Seesaw, you can also have folders. And so I created folders in order to organize the artifacts for me. I created for Sawyer and for the animal pictures, there's animals and sounds, art projects, messages from me, and this is where Eden was posting the work on her name. And then of course reading and you could do math or any curriculum area you choose. These options, we can talk about a little bit later, there are more advanced options and things that you can do. But that is how you can organize and manage each of your classes and set separate permissions for each one if you choose. This is the whole class list if you click here. You get the calendar of events if you post something in there. And this would be where you would see your blog if you have that turned on. Thank you for watching today's Wednesday webinar. In the next Seesaw webinar, we will be covering the topics of getting students signed into your Seesaw account, what to do before inviting parents, inviting parents to join their students Seesaw feed, and finally some frequently asked questions. So see you next time.