This training shares the basics for getting Seesaw set-up for your family child care usage. While Seesaw is always updating their program, the basics shared in this training haven’t changed much over the past few years.
Seesaw is really built for public schools and students documenting their work, but the platform works for child care providers that are looking to build individual child digital portfolios and communicate with families. Child care providers can also engage children in documenting their own learning. Unlike within the public school system providers are not as likely to be assigning lessons/activities. I do know some providers that have shared an activity to be done at home. If that is of interest to you you can learn how to do that through Seesaw’s YouTube channel.
Seesaw offers a FREE option that works fine for usage in child care. This training is about that FREE option. To start:
Go to https://web.seesaw.me/
Click the blue “Sign Up Free” button. You will see:
Click “I’m a Teacher”. You will see:
Complete the information asked for. I signed in under “Create Teacher Account” even using a gmail account. You can Sign up using your Google gmail account directly. Once you click you should see:
Your teacher name will be in the upper left corner. You will probable see a red 1 message bubble. You can ignore that bubble and add a class by just clicking the prompt provided above the pictured image, or to get rid of that bubble you will need to add your school info. Click on your name. A sidebar opens. Scroll to the bottom and you will see the place to add your school.
Complete it and you should get a listing of schools seesaw is trying to match you to. You should also see a message that if your school is not found you can add it. If you don’t see that: add the name of my old program that is still recognized as a school. Then click on “Add my school” that appears after “My school isn’t listed.”
You should see:
Once filled in your school will be recognized and the red bubble gone.
Now let’s go back to the top of this sidebar (Or you can leave the sidebar and go back to the image with the prompt.) and you will see the prompt to “Create New Class.” Here you can see the sample has 4 different classes. You can also see on the right the class that is open to post in. If you have multiple classes you will need to shift between them for your posting. I operated a multi-age program (infants – school-age) licensed for 8 children, but often carried a roster of 12 children with those coming part-time. I only set up 1 class. My purpose in using seesaw was building individual child portfolios. Each time you start a new class the old material is not carried over. I wanted a running portfolio. The class limit for children was high enough I didn’t have concerns about just adding in that one or 2 new children every couple of years. I didn’t delete children when they left my program, just stopped including them is posts. You can delete a child.
To complete your class you will need to pick an age range. Just pick Pre-K. It doesn’t matter for your usage, but is data for seesaw.
Let’s now look at setting up your class for posting, adding children, etc.
Setting up your class (13 minute video)
Posting to Seesaw – Journal and Announcements (23 min. video)
Remember items are chronological in order with the most current added seen first.
Seesaw Professional Support:
Seesaw Teachers Facebook – private group
Member Reflection Activity form OR Non-member Reflection Activity form
FCCAM Training 