Kaylee Whitelaw’s Success Story

Making that home-school connection provides families with not just passive information about school but a door into their child’s learning and daily routines at school. For kindergarten families it can be daunting sending little ones off to school on their own – what will it look like? Who will their teachers be? What will they do during the day? Here, Seesaw can provide a one-stop shop for teacher and content updates, curriculum and learning as it happens, and resources to continue to learning outside of the school day. When families can see what’s going on in real time, many of their questions are immediately answered and students can become owners of their own learning. For older students, showing off “wow work” or using self-assessment and completing activities independently can show families the level of mastery needed in different content areas. In a school that is departmentalized, this creates a super link between teachers and families.

For my MA in Ed Tech, I conducted a 10 month research project looking into the positive implications of using digital portfolios to boost family engagement in student learning. I conducted interviews with multiple families before, during, and after the study. One parent, who happened to be a network member of the school too, admitted that she had not yet logged on by October and didn’t have access to the app on her phone. After assisting her and then interviewing again later in the year she could not believe what she’d been missing and was overwhelmed with gratitude for the posts and wealth of both instructional and social-emotional updates that had been provided by teachers throughout the year. To me, this showed how creating strong family links and checking on those who are not shown as connected in the first couple of weeks of school can make a significant difference to the rest of their school year and their relationship with the school as a whole.

Seesaw can provide a one-stop shop.

Kaylee Whitelaw

Instructional Coach K-4

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