WN special education program utilizes tech

Susan Law and Beth Goudge, West Nodaway special education instructors, are utilizing technology to communicate with parents, and Law is utilizing features for student’s assignments.

Both teachers are using the See Saw for Classrooms app on their cell phones, each in a different way.

Information was sent home at the beginning of the school year for parents to sign up and utilize the app. During parent teacher conferences, Goudge is hoping to sign up the remaining parents. The app is accessible not only with cell phones but with tablets and computers.

Goudge likes the immediacy and privacy of the application. She can take photos of her students with their work and tag the student’s parents. The parents will see only the items relating to their child in which they are tagged.

This maintains privacy and allows the parents to view not only their student’s work but how they are interacting in the classroom. Goudge likened it to Facebook postings but more secure and private.

Goudge likes how it helps her journal and maintain a running record of the students’ progress. She knows parents are viewing their child’s work, something which didn’t always happen when papers were sent home.

Students are now requesting photos to be taken of themselves with their work. Goudge said she utilizes the program for positive items. Parents can comment on the postings or can message the teacher with the app, thus making two-way communication available.

With each student having an individual education plan and different goals within the plan, Goudge likes how the app allows her to track individual performances of her 17 kindergarten through fifth grade students.

Law, who has 17 grade three through ninth graders, utilizes the app for students’ academic work. The students can do math problems and tell how they reached the solutions. It measures reading and sight word fluency.

Not only can Law download assignments, but the app has activities which she can assign the students.

She utilizes Remind, a private mobile messaging platform, for communications with parents. Law can send information, as can Goudge, on testing, spelling and sight words, accelerated reading program, class projects and more.

Goudge plans to add some of the older students to the app during the second semester. She wants the younger students to be comfortable with school before adding them.

Both teachers like how the app can let them set individual goals and skill accomplishments for the students and monitor their accomplishments.

“See Saw allows us to communicate positively and create a better relationship with parents,” Goudge said. “It lets parents know their student is working and doing great things at school. Parents can feel like they are part of the education of their child.”

To outsiders, it might look as though the teachers are playing on their phones, however, they are using their phones as communication devices and for documentation purposes during the school day.

Goudge said the apps are showing “us how to grow our students into active, communicative members of society.”