I am very lucky in the school I work in to have colleagues who are willing to share their work, ideas, resources with one another. As we embarked on the Junior Cycle road with our first years, a colleague and I decided to use the co-teacher option in Seesaw. 
This means I can see the work and her class' work and she can have access to mind. 
It is very useful as you might see a resource you feel you could use with your class. As we are both teaching first years, it is very insightful to see what her students are producing. 
The only inconvenient is with the free version of Seesaw you cannot add more than one teacher to the class so if you wanted to add a whole department you would have to go with the paid version. 

I have just finished correcting homework via Seesaw. I had set my 2nd years to make a little video of their imaginary person (they made a person with cut out of magazines). The videos arrived and my red notification  button was there beside my 2B. Once you click on 2B , all the post to be approved apple in a line. I was able to see the child's name on the left, and play the video. Then underneath, their video I had several options: A little heart to say I like it; Comment - when I could write a comment on the student's work or I could click the microphone and record the feedback; the little hat is part of the paid version (it is called skills but for the moment I feel it needs more development to fit our system; at present it seems to be just a star system); the folder symbol to file the homework into the correct folder. 

It was very easy to use and no glitch.
I guess one of the advantages if that the student's work stays in their journal and they can go and review it. As I am working through description, I hope my students will be able to add more information and make new videos. They will really see their progression in their journal. Looking forward to more! 

It worked! So to recap: 
Before asking students to log in or join your class, click on the wrench for this class and select student signing mode and click option 3 Email/google. Then ask the students to do the following: - Open the app
- Click Email/Google account
- Click New Student? (unless you already have an account)
- Click create Email account
- You will be asked a code: (to get a code, click on STUDENT CODE at the bottom right of the class page)
- then fill in the details. 
That's it. 

If you have uploaded documents beforehand, you need to go back and click on the 3 dotes (see picture below) and click on Edit people and you can select everyone so the students will see your upload. You can also only share to some students if you wanted. 

I must say the tech support has been very good via Twitter so if you have a question, please contact them. 

Like a kid at Christmas, I would so excited to start sharing Seesaw with my students. I had uploaded the worksheet, the song for my first year and all the revision for my 3rd years. 
I had 3rd years first. So far with this class, we had used Edmodo to communicate but it was not working for a portfolio so I decided to move to Seesaw as they would be able to upload their oral practice and also their written work and revision. So I got them to download Seesaw, so far so good! They liked I am a student and they were asked to scan the QR code or at the bottom they had the option email/google account or use a Text code. 

For that class as they are used to logging in in to quilt etc..., i had decided that they would quickly create their account and therefore used the Email/Google Account. They clicked it and a new screen came up. 

One student already had an account, so she went for Sign in email and the others went with New students? The new student? asked you to create a an email account, so I thought this would be easy. But it then asked you for the join code. From my computer, I generate the code but overtime the students put it in they got Ask you teacher for a valid code. The code on my computer had a count down to one hour so plenty of time for students to log in. So we had to stop. I told them i would look into it. 
So during my free class, i had a look and discovered that may be it was something in the settings. So i clicked on the wrench and discovered that there were 3 settings: I had Class code - shared device selected so I changed it to Class code - 1:1 devices but I did not read it carefully enough as I did not understand that the students' name needed to be imported first. So I try it with another class, but after getting in, it said tap your  name which we understood as Type your name but as no keyboard appeared but abandoned. I now feel that if I had added the students' name beforehand that might I have worked but there is no way i typing all the names in. I will look into imposing lists later if I have too. 
So my 1st years arrived and I though this might be easier as I had printed the QR Code. So they opened the app, scan the code but again it asked them to tap their name so again I would have had to type their names in beforehand. 

So to say i was disappointed was an understatement but i am not going to give up. I have contacted Seesaw on Twitter and they replied straight away. You can follow me @sandrinepk. 
So I am back in front of my computer (by the way you can't use the Seesaw website on Safari; you have to use Firefox). I have open a student account and I am doing it again. It seems that if in the settings you select option 3 Email/Google, and create a student code then you are in. I am about to email my students to explain it to them. I must say i expected a create an account page and then join by text code or QR code not the other way round. Personally, i think you should not have to have to change settings for setting up an about. I guess I should have gone though the whole process last night but you would think it would be an easy set up like Quizlet etc... I will let you know if my students manage to get in! I am feeling hopeful! 

The Seesaw website has a lot of description and videos to give you a tour of the app. 

If you browsed through their website, you might have notice the PRICING bar. I am using the free version which seems to be enough for what I want to use it for. The only feature which I might be interested in the pais version is the Formative assessment option but after looking at it, it does not match the MFL specification enough. 

So open an account, it is free. 

Once you are in, you will be asked to enter the name for your class. So in my case, I have called them following our VSWARE pattern. You are now ready to get students to join. You have several ways of doing it, you can print the QR code which students then scan or you can give them a code (similar to Edmodo for those familiar) to join in. 
What I really like with apps like Edmodo and Seesaw is the link to the family. The parent/ guardian of the student will be able to see all his/her work and only her work. It is a good way to keep parent / guardian in the loop and I feel it increases the student's motivation. 
The big green + is the tool to add something to the students' journal. The journal is where all the work is displayed after your approval. 
So as my first post, I wanted to welcome the students to the class, so i decided to add a Welcome photo. 

I clicked Post to Student journal and followed the instructions. If you click Photos - it will bring you to take a photo live, so any upload click the ADD FILE. You can add a sound file to it, annotations, labels, captions etc... A list of tools appears at the bottom. So overtime if you want to share a link to a website, upload notes etc... you can add it to the student's journal. You can either send it to all the class or the one student. 

You can also send announcement to the class or the class and family. These do not appear in your journal feed. 

As you can guess, it would not be manageable without folders to file work in ways which work for you. So you can create folders. Just click on the blue folder account (right hand side)

Like everything else, there are a video tutorials available but it is quite straight forward. 

Click create folder and you can name it, choose a colour. So for example I called one Culture. 

So remember, I uploaded a picture in the journal to welcome the students. So if I wanted this work to be filed in my folder culture, I can go back to the picture/file etc... and at the bottom of that file, I can see this: 

Click on the ... and you will get a menu. Select Edit folders. Your list of folders will appear and you can tick the ones it relates to. The work will automatically be placed in the folders for you to find. 
At the moment, I have not made a final list of what my folders will be. I will have ones for useful videos (where I will have videos students can watch to reinforce learning such as grammar explanations, examples of use etc...) but I think I will know more once I actually start teaching the new spec and get a feeling of what works best. 

At this stage you are probably wondering what it is like for the student. Ill do that in my next post. 

Our school started using iPads 5 years ago. We introduced them to 1st years and now we have them up to 5th years. Last year, many TY did not bring them which I must say was not ideal as they did not have access to notes from Junior cert and could not use all the apps they were used too. I am hoping this year, they will have them. 5th years are allowed to bring any device, so we will see how that works out. 
As we have been using iPads and apps, we have decided to narrow it down to make it easier for the students and they won't have to learn / use a different app for every teacher. 
For my language classes, I have used: Notability; Voice recorder Pro; Book creator. The paid ones are bought in bulk via the school so they work out cheaper. 

This year is a little special as we embark on the new Junior Cycle for MFL. It is pretty exciting as since I started teaching there has been no change in the curriculum. Click below to see the new specification. 

There are also examples of students work available in the four languages. Some of the work is restricted to protect the students. You need to open an account with the NCCA (takes 2 min) using your Teaching Council number. Then you will have access to samples. Click below for a direct link. 

As the new specification specifies that students need to compose a portfolio (this one does not have to be electronic by the way), I have been doing some research. I have been a keen user of Edmodo but for what I envisaged, it did not fit. A colleague who teaches English in my school offered CPD on Seesaw (thanks Joe ;-) Joe manages the school English dept account and you can contact him via the account: @PresWexEng). He showed us how he had used it for the Junior cycle course in English where students also built up a portfolio. I must say I liked what I saw. So I decided to choose it for the next school year to use with my 1st years, TY French, TY Spanish (beg.) and LCVP Spanish (Beg.) ass all of them will build a portfolio as part of the course. I am lucky to have a colleague who has been using it so I can ask questions and exchange ideas.