 Welcome everyone. So this is a webinar focused on getting ready for conferences and how CISA can really support you in that endeavor and all the amazing work that you're going to be sharing with families as they come and visit you. I just want to give you a little glimpse about what we are going to talk about here today. I'm Angela from CISA if you're just joining in. And we are going to talk about gathering those work samples, getting your folders ready, having your students build in that reflection piece while you know they're getting ready to either share at conferences or you are sharing at conferences and then of course it's a great opportunity to connect families. So if you haven't ever joined a webinar before just a couple things to note is you're going to get the recording emailed to you automatically if you registered for this webinar. And you're going to get the slides as well. So keep that in the back of your mind as we are going through some of the materials I have for you here today. So I just thought it would be good to pause for a moment and just reflect a minute on I guess me personally but I'm guessing you're in a similar situation is what is the whole point of conferences right so we're really showing our student growth. We're talking about the whole student and not you know just maybe their test scores. We're talking about and not even talking about but really making sure that partnership between home and school and families is really, really solid and it's it's two way communication that happens at those conferences and of course goal setting also takes place. And I mentioned these things because that those are the four points that came to the top of my mind thinking about conferences. And they're also very well aligned with all all the things that seesaw can do for you. So I know it's just a great tool to really maximize your time at conferences so not even maximize your time but really do all those things really really well so the first thing we're going to talk about is just gathering those samples gathering that student work. And what are you actually going to share at the conferences. So I know a lot of people have different approaches to this and unfortunately you may be a little bit like I was in this picture of a massive amount of folders stacked. So I remember pre seesaw. I would, you know, it was a situation where I'm collecting, you know, 24 writing folders and I'm hauling a moment my little wheelie cart and I'm sitting on my, you know, living room floor and trying to collate 25 different stacks of papers and I know some of you might be doing that right now as we're watching and participating in this webinar. But I had personally in aha moment when I thought, Why am I just not adding it to see that once I started using seesaw. So what I did it was for me it was the moment where I was trying to haul those writing folders home again. And I said, Well, if I just take a picture of their writing sample it's in seesaw it's going to be organized in the writing folder I'm not hauling all this stuff home. And then I also thought, Wow, let's let's involve the students in this process right let's add their their layer of reflection. And I thought it's so simple if I'm just even starting as simple as taking a photo and adding that work to seesaw. So some of you might be thinking, Yes, I already do that which is awesome. But some of you might be having that aha moment just as I did thinking why am I hauling all this, all this other stuff home I can just do it in seesaw easily. So I'm going to talk about a couple options for that if you're thinking, Oh, that's a great idea why why haven't I done that yet. And so the first thing I did was I started thinking about what do I actually want to share and show our conferences. And I thought about what I did before I use seesaw and how that could be replaced or included in seesaw. So things like I always had a writing sample fluency check or you know latest progress and map all sorts of things like that. So you have a couple of options. So first of all, you as a teacher as a reminder can always post to the student journal. So by just tapping that green add button, go to post into student journal and you know you can take a picture of their writing or add other work samples that way. Another favorite of mine and this worked great with my kindergartners is students can just post on their own. Okay, so they go to that gigantic green add button. They're totally set and can just be adding this content as well really really easily. So again, I did this every day with my kindergartners and I know a lot of you out there already have your students posting so you're probably nodding your head right now saying yes, yes. But another option if you haven't yet explored this and I would recommend this. If you have in your mind mapped out those things that you want to present and share at conferences. And they're not yet in seesaw. A great way is to actually create an activity and share that with your students. So on this slide I'm just going through this flow a little bit so on the left you'll see an activity that I found in the seesaw activity library. I'm going to share that with my students and when I do that I have the option here in the center to actually edit the folder that this piece of work is going to go into, which is amazing because it's already saving me some more time organization wise. And then on the right, you'll notice in this particular class, I have all sorts of folders already set up. And so I would just tag that. And then when that activity is shared with the students and they respond. Those things are already going to go in that folder, which is amazing and a time saver. And you also know, you know what samples you already have from each student and see what students you might need to follow up on. So this is again, an example of, you know, including their latest writing performance or sample from writers workshop. So in my kindergarten classroom, we actually did at the end of each month they picked out their favorite writing piece to make sure they had in seesaw. So if you haven't done that yet. That would, it would be a great opportunity just start with maybe the latest one. I wanted to pause here for a moment and read a couple of things that that came through my mind when I was transitioning to really using seesaw as an amazing tool for conferences. And these are, these are common questions that I hear a lot from our community as well. So things like, well they've already seen it in seesaw now what I'm going to show them at conferences they've already seen this work it's already been posted. But I don't want families to see the work until conferences so two things going on there. And again, I have said these things myself as I started using seesaw I had a moment of moment of panic, because I thought well my conferences aren't going to look the same anymore as they have in years past. So what I realized is kind of are kind of my three stars down here. Number one, let's make it less about the reveal right so I found that when I did that. I was way less rushed during the conference I had way more time to actually engage in meaningful conversations with families, and there weren't surprises families don't really like surprises they really really don't. In my experience I think you might have similar experience as well, but I also I think the biggest eye opener to me was I had that fear of oh my gosh they've already seen it, or oh gosh I don't want them to see it yet. And what I realized is when I just went for it. The other way for me was we could talk beyond the, the reveal. Okay, so they already knew about this but I was adding more context. I was showing growth of our time and then we could talk more about next steps and really have time for four questions. So I encourage you if you were like me, asking the same questions and having a little bit of fear about that to just give it a go and I think I think you're never going to turn back and totally love it. I'm going to talk a little bit about folders because I mentioned them earlier. And this goes a little bit into the conversation of what families can see and, and not if you are interested in that. But we're going to talk a little bit about emojis and folders, but I kind of gave that that was to that was that was a quick reveal I wasn't trying to do that. I want to actually go into one of my classes here because I'm going to demo this for you. And I know some of you already have folders set up but I'm going to do a quick demo for people that don't yet have folders set up. So, here we go. So, here's your seesaw class right I'm signed in as a teacher and if you're thinking, you know I already have work in there or I've added work now I want it organized. So what you can do is I'm actually going to scroll to the top this example. I'm going to tap the folder icon right under this post so once I tap there. It actually is going to bring up the folders that I have already created for this class. You can see I have, you know, all sorts of different folders but for the purpose of today I'm going to create a conference folder which is what I suggest you might do. I'm going to call this folder in the past while work. So if that's something that resonates with your kids go ahead and say that too. So I am going to create a folder so I'm going to tap on this button right here. And what I'm going to do actually is this is kind of a pro tip. I am on a MacBook and I'm at get emoji.com. Using iPads you can do, you can actually type emojis but I had a little emoji I'm going to see if I can find it that I thought would be perfect for conferences and of course as I'm scrolling right now I'm, you know, I'm going to not not find the exact ideal one that I want. So I'm going to copy that. I'm actually going to go back here I'm going to paste it. Did you know that you can do that how fun right so I'm going to call this conferences. Like I said or you could call it wow work. And the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put a dot a little period in front of the name of this. I'm going to do a fun color. The reason that I put a dot there is I'm going to do this green check. And what does do what do you notice it is at the top of my list of folders. So if you want your students involved and you're working with younger students if you want them involved in actually tagging folders with work. This is a great way to just make it even easier for them. So for little this little picture queue of this emoji is awesome when you're typing in the name to insert an emoji or at it. And then I can just do the green check and you'll see that this piece of work has gone into the conference folder. So, what is handy about this is that on the right here with all of your students you can sort by folders. So for example, if Karina's parents are coming in. Not only can I filter to Karina so everything here will show all of her posts in her entire portfolio. But if I'm thinking oh that's too overwhelming I want to focus on just a few pieces for the point of this discussion. I would tap here on this folder and then I can choose which folder I would like to focus on and I would of course say conference folder right which I don't have anything in there yet. So, in order to prepare for this I'm just going to tag a couple things with conferences, and you'll notice if work is already in seesaw you see what I'm doing here right I'm just tapping the folder under it. And of course I would actually be selecting only the work I want to show at conferences not everything. So again if I'm in the class journal I'm going to see everything from all students. But if I want to go to a unique student like Karina right here and then go to her conference folder I can tap the folder on the right, and then conferences and boom there we go. I have all of my posts that I want to share with families right here, really really handy dandy. The other thing I'm going to just note and this might come in handy later in the year for you is this print PDF. When you add content to folders you can actually print the entire folder of work up to 80 posts with this print PDF button. And again I'm on the web showing that so make sure you do that. Okay, a couple other things about folders is if I go in the upper right to my wrench my class settings, and I scroll down if you are new to folders, scroll down to this folders section and make sure this show add to folder step. Is actually turned to students and teachers if you want your students to be able to add work to folders. If you only want you yourself to add work to folders just make sure it's checked with teachers. So at the kindergarten level I did not have my students add work to folders at the beginning of the year but I think actually by November conferences they were adding work to folders, and I think the activity flow. Actually makes it even easier where they don't even have to do that you can do that for them if you're choosing to do it that way. Okay, so lots of info about folders. And I'm going to go back here into my slides for a moment to show you a few more things. So again if you want to know more about emojis. We have a little video about how you get them on a Chromebook, I was on a MacBook and so you saw that. But if you go to get emoji calm they actually have tutorials about any device and how you get emojis on any device if that is something you like to add to your folders. So let's talk about something else to get ready for conferences. I think it's a perfect time to give your students a chance to reflect and set some goals. So I think a great way to do that is through our activities feature. Again, you might already have ways that you're doing this in your class like favorite, you know, activities that they've already done, you can simply take a photo of that, add a voice recording and see sign you're set. But if you're looking for maybe something new. These are activities that you can when you get the slides emailed to you you can save these and actually be ready to use them tomorrow so on the left here you see more of a primary example of goal setting. So maybe these your students have thought about their hopes and dreams at the beginning of the school year and it's a logical time to check in with those and see if they want to adjust. And then on the right I have more of an intermediate upper elementary example of two stars in a goal meaning what what are two things that they've done really well. So a new idea for a goal they they would like to to work towards. So again these are activities that you can use and get again your students involved in that reflection process. If you go into the seesaw activity library I want to actually show you something here quick. If I'm signing as a teacher again and I go to browse activity library. The other thing that you can actually do is if you search conferences. You're going to come up with all sorts of activities that other teachers have already included with themselves getting ready for conferences. So that is another way to kind of save yourself some time and see what's already existing so that you can take advantage of that as well. So let's keep chatting and then we're going to have time for questions. Another thing is let's talk about getting those families connected so tons of you here live today already have family members connected which is awesome. And for those of you that don't yet I'm going to show you a couple things. So on this slide this is these are this is for my my teachers out there today that don't, or that have family members connected, but maybe some family members that aren't yet connected. So I have this reference here in the slide but I'm actually going to demo live both options really. So if you're a teacher and you haven't yet connected family members conferences is a prime time while you're face to face with them to really get them connected to your seesaw class. You will not regret it and they're going to love it. You're going to love it. The students are going to love it. It's going to be amazing. So if you're ready to do that just in the bottom right just click on this plus families button, you can turn on family access and then you can print the paper invites. This is what I would suggest if you're meeting face to face with with families to have it right there ready to go. And if I tap this button you those of you that are already have family members connected you know this but seesaw is doing all the work for you right. So we are creating all of these handouts for each unique student so this is of these handouts. This is Karina's handout. And again these QR codes are unique to that specific child. So what I have what I have done personally is if I have family members that weren't yet connected and I'm going to show you that in a moment how to determine who who is and is not connected. We sat face to face at conferences and I said hey you know I love. I think you would enjoy being connected to seesaw to see what your student is reflecting and sharing. And really it was sometimes just a matter of, you know, let's download the app if they want to do it on their phone or let's, you know, let me give them this handout so they can take it home and be ready to go. It's just a great another great opportunity so I highly encourage you to take advantage of that. I want to scroll back here for a moment because this will also show you if you have already invited families this will also show you currently connected parents. Okay, so you'll have a list that have connections already so you don't have to worry about that. I also want to show you this way. So if you already have families connected if you go to the wrench in the upper right, and then you go scroll down to manage families, you click here it actually has it divided for you so it will show you a list of not connected so it'll show you the students and then you would just of course prepare those invites for those families and be all set to go so again I think it's a great time to take advantage of that face to face time to to get them connected with what their child is doing on seesaw. And of course, it's always an option they don't have to download an app it's always an option to they could just go to the website app dot see saw that me to see their child's work as well. Now we're going to go into questions here for a remaining time we have about almost 10 minutes, but I also want to just give a little shout out because in about 25 minutes I'm going to start my next webinar that's all about family communication. So if you want to register for that there is the link right there it's also on our PD site for registering for even this webinar. So if you made it here you can probably make it to that one as well if you are curious just more about all the things you can do with family communication in seesaw so you can join us in a little bit for that. I'm going to take a quick question slide and eagerly answer the questions that you have coming in. So take a moment and type in some questions and I'm going to go ahead and go through these questions. While you're typing in questions, those of you that are watching the recording, so glad that you're here as well. Just note that we've got tons of webinars always happening here at seesaw and locked on our YouTube channel as well. So for those of you live, we're going to have a survey that comes up at the end of this webinar and we love love love for you to fill it out, gives us a lot of feedback, lets us know what you want to hear and learn about. So please take time to do that but let's go into some questions.