Summer Learning Series: Share Your Smarts with Seesaw

This has been an exciting summer for NEISD Technology Services. Our district just purchased Seesaw for Schools for every one of our 46 elementary campuses. This platform provides our teachers the opportunity to effectively communicate with parents and collect student work that shows growth over time. Students now have the means to make their thinking visible so the teacher can quickly clarify misconceptions, and students can choose the way they wish to create a unique project by using one of the 7 options in the learning journal. 

The one feature I’m most excited about is the ability to easily share student work by printing a QR code to display in the hallway. This gives the old bulletin board concept of everyone having the EXACT same looking product a much needed 2.0 makeover. You can read more about using Seesaw QR codes here.

I’ve created a presentation to help get you started with sharing your class “smarts”. 

Tool of the Summer: Bulb

I’ve been a busy little bee this summer creating PD classes for the new school year. One of the tools I’m using to gather my resources is Bulb. Oh, how I love this site! Bulb allows you to organize content into collections, making it very easy for the user to separate content into different sections. I like it because you are not overwhelming the participant with lots of information at one time. This also makes the perfect tool for flipping lessons or collecting work for student portfolios. You can learn how to get started by visiting their Bulb for Teachers and Students.

I’ve seen many differentiated resources on the Internet lately and decided to make one for an App Smashes and Flows class I will be teaching in August. I created a Bulb with 6 different sections. The idea is to introduce the concept of App Smashes and Flows, explain the differences between the two, and then allow the participants to choose their tasks based on their comfort level with the iPad. Bulb is the perfect tool for this purpose. 

app smash and flow

I’m not the only NEISD fan of Bulb. Sue Carlson, NEISD Instructional Technology Specialist, also used Bulb to curate her resources for our district’s What’s New in Office 2013? professional development course. Sue was able to create separate pages for each of the different software titles within the Office Suite. Participants are able to return to her Bulb for quick reminders, if needed.

Capture
Check out some of my other PD courses I’ve created using Bulb: