App creates digital portfolio for students

A new app allows students to create a digital portfolio, accessible by teachers and parents, to showcase and organise their work.

In most schools, students have journals for each subject in which they keep their written work. Learning journals allow teachers to track student’s progress over time and serve as a convenient place to keep work related to a particular subject. Educators note, however, that written journals don’t capture all of a students’ learning, just the parts of it that they write down. Schools are increasing the amount of work that is done digitally. Therefore, they also need a digital place to showcase that work. Trying to solve this problem is Seesaw, an app that allows students to share all of their print and digital learning with teachers, classmates, and their parents.

Seesaw works like an e-portfolio to allow students to easily document all types of learning. Students can post photos, drawings, text, videos, PDFs, audio, and links to projects created in other apps or websites. Each student has their own portfolio, which is visible to parents as well as teachers. Students add to their Seesaw journal and the content is uploaded. This content is immediately accessible to teachers from any device. Teachers can browse and organise the work by student, class, subject area or project. Teachers can also share examples with the entire class. There are no passwords for students to remember, and younger students can even sign in by scanning a QR code.

Because students’ portfolios are also visible to parents, the app is a way for parents to keep up to date with everything their child is doing at school. Teachers and schools can also use the app to send announcements to all families or students in a class. Additionally, they can privately message individual parents. Built-in translation tools help Seesaw posts reach parents who may not speak English. At Springwise, we have already covered a number of education innovations, including a school that focuses on entrepreneurship and an interactive AR teddy bear that acts as a learning tool. What other types of digital tools might help to showcase and improve students’ learning?