Seesaw - ePortfolios for Elementary Setting

There are many great ePortfolio options available, including Evernote or Google, however they can be a bit overwhelming for the students in primary grades.  Especially if you want to have them save exemplars.

Seesaw is a free iDevice app that is very simple to use allowing any student capable of using an iPad to take a photo to save an exemplar into their ePortfolio.

Instead of calling them ePortfolio's, Seesaw uses the term journals, both class journals containing works displayed by the entire class and individual journals containing works by any particular student.

The process is quite simple.  As a teacher you create your free account which will be tied to your classroom.  Set up all your students inside that class.

From there you can add either a photo, video, drawing, or something from the camera roll.

 

Once you upload an item, like a photo, you can add annotation, voice recording, or text.

Then you select which student is associated with the artifact.  You can select multiple students if it is a group project.

The app allows for student access as well.  The only rights students have will be to add artifacts. Students do not need an account, just scan a QR code and they are in.  While logged in as a student they will have the ability to view any artifact from within the class, not just their own.

Let the students do the work: take the picture, create a drawing, shoot a video, or select a project from the camera roll to insert into their own journal.  As a safe guard, before it is finalized into a students journal the teacher must approve the artifact from within their teacher account.




Seesaw allows for you to invite parents so they have ability to see only their child's artifacts.

If you have been looking for an ePortfolio type tool to use with K-3rd grade, this is a perfect fit.  Easy to use so students do the work, teacher has full control over anything posted, and parents have access to their child's work.  Also a great visual recap come conference time.

Kahoot or Quizizz - Game Based Classroom Response Systems

These two free, device neutral, online resources are sure to bring high engagement and active participation into any classroom.  The idea is simple, students answer questions in a competitive atmosphere, there will be a winner.

For both Kahoot and Quizizz, the facilitator creates a series of questions to be answered by the participants.  Each question can have a time limit before the participant must select a response.  The quicker the participant chooses a response, the more points they earn providing their choice was correct.

Using Kahoot, the questions are asked to the participants one at a time.  Participants view the projected screen, answer a question by selecting the corresponding color on their device, points are awarded, and a new question is provided.  When finished, persons with the most points will be displayed.

Using Quizizz, the facilitator starts the activity at which time participants are given questions in a random order.  The participants read the questions on their device and answer them at their own pace.  Once all participants complete the activity, persons with the most points will be displayed.


Quizizz would be a great tool to use for an entire class, or as a center since it is student driven.  Kahoot is teacher driven providing time for discussion between each question being asked.

I've tried using both resources with groups of at least 40, and each time they worked fine.

Both Kahoot and Quizizz allows teachers to create their own questions, which can include images. When finished with the activity, the teacher can save the data describing how students answered each question. Teachers can explore through the many public assessments created and shared by others.

In either case, these opportunities provide a nice review experience or possibly a motivating pre-assessment experience.  Definitely stated, the experience will be fun, highly energetic, and competitive.

Edcite - Create Online Assessment Opportunities for Your Students

With SBAC on the horizon the stress level is high on teachers who have concerns about giving the students testing scenarios that model the tech skills they will need to be successful with the new tests.  Edcite is a great solution for this.

There are multiple ways of using this resource.  The simplest is to reuse or modify an already created assignment from the site which are easily found using filters and search terms based on topics, CCSS, and/or grade level.  Once saving the assignment to your own personal library you can quickly send out an assignment through a URL to students to take and gather data on.  Students will not need an edcite account to utilize the site this way.   Students must finish the assignment in one sitting in this scenario.

The second scenario is to create a class and assign username and passwords to the students.  The benefit of this is having the ability to quickly assign and have the assignment appear in the students' accounts.  It also would allow for a student to start an assignment, leave for the day, and then relog into the assignment and finish at a later time.

Both ways will track data for the teacher that gives the assignment.  Assignments are automatically graded outside of the open ended, which the teacher will go in and self grade.  Teachers can create their own questions and own assignments aligned with the curriculum that they are working on.

Why do online assessments and assignments?  Edcite allows the students to have experiences with the different questioning styles that they will experience in the SBAC.  For example, open ended, drag and drop, make a line on a grid, etc... The more online reading and writing opportunities students are given the opportunity to do, the less "lack of tech experience" will impact their performance when they are assessed in the spring.  Free and usable from Kinder to 12th grade, this resource is well worth your time!