EdTech @ ISB

Transforming Teaching & Learning

Tag: professional learning

Seesaw: Getting started

September 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

How to make your first welcome announcement to your families and students

  1. Take a picture or a few pics of your new homeroom class
  2. From your school iPad open the Seesaw app, or, if you are on your laptop, log into https://app.seesaw.me/
  3. If this is the first time you are logging in to Seesaw, you will need to select “I am a teacher” and log in with your ISB email address and password
  4. Click on the large green “+” symbol
  5. Select “Send Announcement” > Send To: All Students and Families (if some parents aren’t connected yet they will receive instructions on Monday afternoon)
  6. Type your welcome message to your students and families
  7. Upload your class photo(s) from your camera roll
  8. When you have completed your message, click the large green tick button and it will appear in student & parent feeds.

Please note, as new parents will not yet be connected, this welcome post will be made in the student announcements for all users to see. In the future (when all parents are connected) teachers will be asked to use “Family Announcements” to ensure student journals don’t contain parent communications.

On Monday, Tina, Angela and I will distribute printed QR codes and instructions to all homeroom teachers, for families to connect to their child’s Seesaw journal. Families will need to follow the instructions to download the Seesaw Family app and scan the code in order to see any Family Announcements or student posts.

Throughout Monday, we will prioritize our time to support any teachers who require help with Seesaw. We’ll be available for 1:1 help all day including after school. Please be in touch or stop by the ES Library office if you need any help.

What is Seesaw?

Seesaw is a student-driven portfolio platform that is used across the ES to empower students to document, share and reflect upon their learning journey throughout the academic year and across their years in the elementary school.

As part of our Seesaw Common Agreements, there are certain tasks and setup procedures that each teacher should do once their class has been created. There are also some introductory lessons/ideas that can help you get started using Seesaw in your class.

You can use this checklist to guide you.

Setting Up Seesaw

  • Ensure preferred names are correct in your class list
  • Invite all specialist teachers as “co-teachers” to your class (except Chinese as they have their own Seesaw classes)
  • Manage settings: student likes & comments, post moderation, parent comments (as appropriate to your age and class group)
  • Create color-coded folders for portfolios (L21) and content areas:
    • Innovation & Creativity (Purple) 
    • Communication & Collaboration (Yellow) 
    • Inquiry, Critical Thinking & Problem Solving (Blue) 
    • Leadership & Responsibility (Green) 
    • Global Thinking (Red) 
    • As well as folders for Math, ELA, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, PE, Science, Social Studies
  • Create any additional folders as required
  • Print out your class account QR code so students can join your class
  • Send home “parent note” generated by Seesaw

Teaching with Seesaw

  • Post a “Welcome!” message to all students/parents.
  • Teach (or co-teach with your Tech Facilitator) an “Intro to Seesaw” lesson
  • Teach (or co-teach with your Tech Facilitator) a RUA lesson based on Seesaw use
  • Plan (or co-plan with your Tech Facilitator and/or grade level team) a variety of ways to integrate Seesaw into all curriculum areas

You can also get a digital version of this document/table.

#techchat vol 1

September 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Canva

Canva is an easy online tool for some high quality graphic design! (The banner above was made in Canva.) It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s free! You can choose from a bunch of preset templates, use the free images and graphics that are pre-loaded and create a  great looking image in no time. Or, you can upload your own images and even pay for the ‘premium’ fonts and graphics if you want to go that extra mile!

Technology Addiction: Concern, Controversy and Finding Balance

Common Sense Media does a lot of research in the field of digital citizenship and child behavior. In May 2016, the organization published this executive summary (sign-in required) of a research brief that they completed with their 6 key findings summarized as well as a great list of references for further reading.

Show Me for iPads

Show Me is an app that is on all of our elementary school iPads. It’s an interactive whiteboard that allows students to import images, add text annotations, and draw on top of their images. They can record this whole process, including their voice explanations as they ‘show’ their thinking. This explanation can include multiple slides so students, for example, can easily compare a “before” and “after” image and explain what they’ve done/learned. This is can all be saved as a movie in the camera roll and can then be uploaded to Seesaw just like any other video.

#techchat is a regular post on the ISB Ed Tech blog. The aim is to share useful apps, websites, readings, and more to the ISB community. How have you used these resources? What else can we feature? We’d love to have your suggestions or comments below!

Upcoming Ed Tech PD

October 14, 2016 / / 0 Comments
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons ( CC0 ) license

flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons ( CC0 ) license

As teachers in China, we’re lucky to be working in a region with amazing professional development opportunities, particularly related to educational technology. Here is a (probably incomplete) list of ed tech-related PD opportunities for the rest of the school year:

Office 365 Summit | January 14 – 15 | Guangzhou

This is the first ever Office 365 Summit and is a direct response to the needs of international schools in China. It’s also a chance for you to present some of the awesome things that you are doing with Office 365 in your classrooms. It would be great to have a strong ISB presence at this conference and there may be opportunities to support teachers who are interested in presenting or attending!

EARCOS Teachers Conference | March 30 – April 1 | Kota Kinabalu

This year’s ETC features an educational technology strand with special presentations and preconference offerings focused on transforming your classroom through educational technology.

EARCOS Weekend Workshops | Ongoing | Various

In addition to the Teachers Conference, EARCOS supports a number of smaller weekend workshops around the region and some of them have a specific ed tech focus. For example, Go Deeper with Social Media in Teaching and Learning with Dr Alec Couros in November, or Integrating Media and Technology in the Chinese Classroom in February.

21C Learning Hong Kong | March 10 – 11 | Hong Kong

The 9th iteration of the popular Hong Kong based conference. Lots of interesting workshops on offer, and another great chance to hone your presenting skills!

The Level 5 | throughout the year | Shekou International School

Some great offerings, from Arduino robots to Graffiti Art, by teachers throughout the Asia region. It’s close by at SIS so you can get a great professional learning experience with no time out of the classroom!

If you’d like to chat about any of these, stop on by the Ed Tech Office!

 

 

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