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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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Allows students to textivate their own resources, edit existing resources for use "on the fly" and search / browse the public resources on textivate. Does not allow upload, worksheet printing etc. A student password is available with Premium and Group subscriptions.

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Screencastify

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millions use Screencastify to create amazing videos

/* Sets tab pane to display block instead of default display:none */ /* Allows CSS opacity transitions */ .w-tab-pane, .w--current { display: block; } /* Any .w-tab-pane that does not have webflow .w--curent sets opacity 0 */ .w-tab-pane:not(.w--curent) { opacity: 0; } /* Any element with .w-tab-pane that has .w--tab-active sets the opacity 100% */ .w-tab-pane.w--tab-active { opacity: 1; } /* Set the opacity transition to 1 second ease-in */ .w-tab-pane { transition: opacity 1s ease-in; }

Educator, student, marketer, engineer, gamer. Whatever part you play, you'll have simple, yet powerful screen recording and editing tools.
Learn more

Easily share your creations in multiple channels. Let more viewers watch, pause and rewind on their schedule while maximizing time by eliminating unnecessary meetings.
Learn more

Collect video assignments to ensure any team or student is heard. Track viewing activity and add interactive questions and more to ensure your message is understood.
Learn more

Educator, student, marketer, engineer, gamer. Whatever part you play, you'll have simple, yet powerful screen recording and editing tools.
Learn more

Easily share your creations in multiple channels. Let more viewers watch, pause and rewind on their schedule while maximizing time by eliminating unnecessary meetings.
Learn more

Collect video assignments to ensure any team or student is heard. Track viewing activity and add interactive questions and more to ensure your message is understood.
Learn more

loved by everyday video creators

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Screencastify | Screen Recording and Video Editing

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Screencastify is the leading screen recorder for Chrome. Install the extension to record, edit, and share videos in seconds. Create video class assignments, training and tutorials, and make business communication faster.

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eBooks

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Book Creator - Love Learning - Book Creator app

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Teachers love it. Students love it. Book Creator is the simplest, most inclusive way to create content in the classroom.

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Flipgrid

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Self-reflection

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Meagan Kelly wants to change how teachers connect and share ideas by first changing how teachers self-assess. After a series of self-awareness exercises, participants of BoostEdu&nbsp;gain insight into their own methodology then have the option to share their work. It's like taking your teaching practice to the gym.

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Digital Fluency

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First let's take a step back to define literacy.

Literacy is competence or knowledge of something - it's the part of learning that requires one to make meaning.

Kids today can easily make meaning of an iPhone or Chromebook and the apps. They can use them, choose them, and even abuse them. With relative ease they can make and create meaning and share ubiquitously with the world through the use of technology - and often without any instruction from adults - often better than adults. This is how one should understand the term literacy. Literacy is defined as competence or knowledge in a specified area. Those students who were born into a household with technology, develop an almost innate competence with technology, with some exceptions of course, and their literacy can stem from their lack of fear in using the devices. Don't believe me? Watch a fourth grader be introduced to a new app or tool. They touch, tap and/or click all of the buttons and dive head first into using the new app and almost always emerge able to use and produce with it - with relative ease.

As educators if we spend our time talking about literacy - and what feels like ONLY literacy - and So here is why I want to cringe. What students don't possess most often is a not digital literacy, but rather digital fluency. we leave out the more educationally important idea of fluency we might be doing students an injustice. Fluency is the term that SHOULD be at the heart of everything we are talking about. It is where the transfer of knowledge happens, where kids apply that literacy they developed without our help, and get past the making meaning stage to a place where they are transferring knowledge on their way to becoming effective digital citizens and learners.

To better understand why I cringe lets take a closer look at fluency.

Fluency is defined as the ability to express oneself easily, and in very simple terms, having fluency allows you to be able to get to an end result - to have your message received and understood. Fluency is where we need to shift our rhetoric around students and their use of technology for learning. Fluency is different than literacy because the former is simply making meaning of something and the latter is the important concept of transfer of knowledge - it's where digital savviness begins to grow from a seedling to a beautiful blossoming tree.

For many years, I have come back to this definition posted on Socialens Blog that states:

" A literate person is perfectly capable of using the tools. They know how to use them and what to do with them, but the outcome is less likely to match their intention. It is not until that person reaches a level of fluency, however, that they are comfortable with when to use the tools to achieve the desired outcome, and even why the tools they are using are likely to have the desired outcome at all."

This definition really encompasses this shift we need to make. We need to reframe our idea of digital knowledge. While we SHOULD pay attention to digital literacies, when there are gaps, the deep and important learning happens when we turn our focus to digital fluency.
Here is an important example from the classroom:
Take online searching: students are literate enough to search on Google. The question we should be asking as educators is - are they fluent in search? Do they know how to craft a search that will deliver to them a page of really meaningful and purposeful results - results that come from mostly credible sources? Do they have the fluency to evaluate the information the search produces. I promise you the answer is no in 98% of cases. There is a fluency to search, to knowing what happens when you add quotes, or the minus symbol, or keywords and how this all affects the end result. This is the digital fluency of understanding the intended message (or query) you are delivering to Google.

Students need to understand how to effectively communicate - to be digitally fluent enough to pick the right app for the right outcome, or even app-smash some tools together to get the biggest and most optimal effect. As teachers we need to be digitally fluent enough to know which tools will garner the best information about students as learners, and when technology can offer us real amplification opportunities for learning.

So, I cringe because it's the wrong term that is our center of attention...I believe that it's not literacy, but fluency that should be our focus. As we grow stronger in our understanding of technology and learning, it will become important for us to shift our focus from digital literacy to fluency. As educators in the 21st Century, we need to be able to differentiate between the two, to understand the difference, and to understand why one may be even more important in school than the other. In the end because digital fluency is where we have the transfer of knowledge - it stands out in importance and causes me to cringe when we deny its importance by our sometimes myopic focus on digital literacy.

Help me by changing the conversation at your school or district. Do it for the kids!

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Why I cringe every time I hear the term Digital Literacy

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First let's take a step back to define literacy. Literacy is competence or knowledge of something - it's the part of learning that requires one to make meaning. Kids today can easily make meaning of an iPhone or Chromebook and the apps. They can use them, choose them, and even abuse them.

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Seesaw | Elementary Learning Experience Platform

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Elementary Learning Experience Platform | Seesaw

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Seesaw is a Learning Experience Platform with 25M+ users, enhancing elementary education, engagement, and school culture while improving academic success.

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April 23-27

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I've been curious about Google's Applied Digital Skills Resources for a while now and I've finally found the time to take the plunge with my students to see what it is all about.

What is the Applied Digital Skills Curriculum?

I've decided to have students create a If-Then Adventure Story using the Applied Digital Skills Videos and Instructions.

Create an interactive, If-Then Adventure Story Connected to Pollution using Google Slides.

Google is hosting an Applied Digital Skills Workshop in Chicago on Tuesday, April 24th and EdTechTeam is hosting several live events during the week of April 23 - 27. I will share anything new I learn in the comments below.

Want to learn more? Sign up to participate in the EdTechTeam Applied Digital Skills Week to receive daily tips and challenges as well as access to live events and prizes for using the curriculum with your students!

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Exploring Google Applied Digital Skills - A Focus on Student Creativity

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I've been curious about Google's Applied Digital Skills Resources for a while now and I've finally found the time to take the plunge with my students to see what it is all about. What is the Applied Digital Skills Curriculum? I've decided to have students create a If-Then Adventure Story using the Applied Digital Skills Videos and Instructions.

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Use Adobe Spark for reflections

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Today at the EdTech Team Illinois Summit I was inspired by a great session on I've created a quick activity connected to a HyperDocs and Visible Thinking Routines.
3 - 2 - 1 Bridge Activity for my students to initially activate their knowledge about sustainable agriculture. They will then reflect on their knowledge after completing this HyperDoc connected to sustainable agriculture. Finally, students will reflect on the connections between their before and after ideas using a FlipGrid response.

How could you adapt this for your students? How could I do this differently?

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3 - 2 - 1 Reflective Visible Thinking Activity for HyperDocs

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Today at the EdTech Team Illinois Summit I was inspired by a great session on I've created a quick activity connected to a HyperDocs and Visible Thinking Routines. 3 - 2 - 1 Bridge Activity for my students to initially activate their knowledge about sustainable agriculture.

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Formative Assessment

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We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.