Pros & Cons

Pros

1. Student Engagement: According to a case study conducted in Somerset Academy Stephanie Campus in Nevada, students becomes more engaged in the class and the projects since they want to show their best works to other people such as their peers, teachers and parents. And for those school who have built school accounts in Seesaw, school administrators are able to see children's works and comment on them, which makes the children proud of themselves and working harder to have high-quality creations.

2. Parents Engagement: Usually it's not an easy thing for teachers to communicate a lot with parents since they may not have enough time to talk in detail with parents one by one based on the class number and also parents may not know clearly what their children are doing in each class. With the help of Seesaw, enhancing parents' engagement in children's education and development becomes much easier. Parents can view their kids' creations thus have more topics to talk with the teacher and simply downloading the App in their iPhone or Android phone make it convenient to receive the new items notification.

3. Technology Engagement: If the technology products are difficult or time-consuming to use, it would not be a good idea for teachers to choose them. Seesaw is free to use and the operation is much easier and time-saving. A teacher is able to create several different class in a short time. For students, two ways to access the program ensure that they can easily navigate the application through the appropriate way. Also, the multimedia elements in Seesaw make it possible for students to manage the skills even they are only kindergarten kids, such as recording their voices or recording a video. They will be more prepared to meet the 21st digital citizenship requirements.

Cons

1. Problems: We know for students who use the QR code to access into Seesaw, they should tag themselves each time they upload an item. The possible concern is that the teachers need to make an effort in leading students understand it is a rule that they should only tag their own names when completing individual works. However since teachers may have to deal with younger kids, such as the kindergarten children in the examples, it may be possible that some children won't tag themselves but tag other people to make a joke or something.

Possible Solutions: Teachers are able to control the posting of each item. When they notice the post is wrongly tagged, they don't need to approve it and what's more important is that they should talk with the student and explain why the item isn't approved and the right thing to do is to tag their own names. Also, the teachers can guide the students to learn some rules before diving into the Seesaw world. Some classroom expectation guidance is provided by the Seesaw team. Check out the document and customize it for your own use.

2. Problems: Some teachers have complaints saying that there's no way to grade items in Seesaw. However if we think about it carefully, Seesaw is an awesome place to store students' works and also we can design so many classroom activities as is described in Classroom Examples page. The purpose of it is not to grade students but to offer them a chance to share their proud works and encourage communications with parents. Besides, it may not be a good idea to grade students there in Seesaw since all of their works can be see by their peers, if you give them grades under each item, then all of the other students can see it, which is definitely what you do not want to see.