Seesaw Parent and Family

I have taught second grade for many years. For the past several years, I have used Class Dojo to keep families informed about what their children are doing in school and send messages back and forth. I switched to SeeSaw this year because Class Dojo won’t he student data privacy pledge. I wish SeeSaw had a few features I am used to, such as the ability to schedule messages for delivery at a later time. Also, posting pictures and videos of my learners in action takes SO many steps on SeeSaw! Notifications don’t always appear in a timely manner either, so sometimes I miss messages from parents until after school. I am committed to using it through the end of this school year, and I hope that the parts I am learning to use (like students uploading their work) will be better than what I have experienced so far.

Seesaw Gives me a “peek” into my 2nd grader’s school day. From photos of her journaling assignments to videos of her presentations, it’s a wonderful (and easy) way for me, but also grandparents, uncles, aunts,, etc to be a part of her school day. I am able to “love “ and/or comment on the pictures, there is a zoom option (which makes reading assignments on my phone much easier), and a section where teachers can send out a notification that might be urgent (such as, we are closing early for snow!). I am very pleased with this app so far.

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It’s one of two things.....either the school our kids go to have no idea how to use the app effectively, or it’s the worst app of all time. I have notifications turned off but I get notifications constantly. We have two kids, so every time a school note goes out I get everything twice. There is no rhyme or reason to things that get posted. Basically there are so many notes that it makes it tedious to even want to navigate. The only thing I like it for, is if a teacher or my kids post a photo or video of something cool they did in class. I’ve told our kids that they are responsible for their learning and that we won’t use the app. No different than the way it was before technology. If it’s something important we parents need to know.....just send us an email or send a note home with the kids.

I am a private tutor. I use this app multiple times a day with all of my students. There are so many features that I like about this app. It has been a great way to go paperless and to communicate with my parents. I have the parents post videos and pictures of the homework I assign. In order to do this they have to download the class app and the family app. There needs to be a way to integrate all of this into one app. Having two apps makes the first week of setup really confusing for parents. It would be much more convenient if all of the features were combined into one app.

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I’ve been using Seesaw online before but it’s difficult to view pictures and video on a tablet there (if it’s an album then all you see is a small image), so this year I gave up and installed the app. Other than being able to see larger pictures and more stable navigation (it was just atrocious online, so hardly an improvement), I don’t see any benefits in installing the app and consuming space on your device. I have just one kid who is in the last elementary grade. But according to the app, I have 5 children since it seems to treat every class as “child”. Can’t get rid of any old stuff. When I open a list of “children”, they all are listed under one name and I don’t know which class is which. Messages from 2 grades ago are still there, can’t delete anything. Sometimes notification bubble is up but there is actually nothing new when you tap on it. Overall seems very disorganized and maybe convenient for teachers but not so much for the parents. Can’t wait to not use it ever!