glow vs seesaw

[BigGlasses]

Our primary school (in Scotland) has been using Glow to distribute work and communicate with the kids during lockdown. Its been ok, but not great to be honest. Its based on outlook365 and its not very intuative and pretty much requires a computer to be able to use it.

The headteacher is suggesting that we maybe switch to Seesaw which is more accessible on a phone. There is a cost to seesaw (glow is free) but she thinks it will be easier for parents to access and upload via their phone so improve engagement. It will also be easier for teachers to look at work, as in glow it is a case of going into every individual folder. She is asking whether parents might want to switch.

As parents we haven't experienced seesaw. The majority seem to hate Glow, but we have now put so much effort into understanding it and now know its quirks that it's maybe just best to stick with it rather than have the challenge of learning a completely new system.

Anyone got experience of both? Is it worth the effort, and cost of switching to seesaw next session?

We have seesaw, which is fine. Actually interacting with the set activities can be really frustrating because you have to place letters in boxes or write on the screen (hard to describe). It's also annoying if you have more than one child and want to use one device - you have to log in and out.

We have Seesaw and I'm really impressed. I only have one child using it so not experiencing the issues of the PP. I've found it very intuitive and [as long as the work has been loaded correctly by school] no issues with using the different functions to complete it.

My DD loves using it too (we use on iPad and iPhone).

Hope that helps.

We don't have Glow but we do have seesaw.
It's easy for DC to upload videos or a picture with commentary.
As pp said it's a pain to switch between accounts and also for a long time DS3's teacher didn't realise the difference between a parent and a pupil code so we couldn't fully utilise it.
Mine don't complete activities on there so can't comment on that.
My main complaint about all the platforms my DC use for school work is the ability to 'like' other people's work. I'm fine with being able to leave a comment but it's a bit too much like soft social media for me. I'm aware I'm probably old fashioned in this though.

My daughter uses Seesaw and it seems fine BUT they use it in conjunction with Firefly, so I’m guessing it doesn’t do everything they need.

Younger two use Teams, I presume you’ve considered?

We used seesaw. I printed a lot out and uploaded photos of completed work. I guess others used ipads but we have a desktop which I need to use and a teeny kindle so printing worked for us.

My youngest uses Seesaw and we find it really user friendly. It is divided in journal (all past work), activities (outstanding work) and messages (class/individual). It's been fabulous during lockdown, we can use it on our PC, phone or laptop. We can edit it one piece on different devices, e.g. add a photo from the phone into work done on the PC. I'd really recommend it

We’ve been using seesaw (for one child) and so far I’ve been really impressed. We have it on my iPhone and an iPad. Really easy to upload photos, audio notes etc. I have no experience of Glow so can’t compare.

We've got kids using both: older primary kids (P4+) use Glow and Teams, younger ones using Seesaw.

It was a bit of a learning curve for the older two to get to grips with Glow and using Teams to 'chat' with their teachers and classmates, but they've coped fine.

Oldest child (P7) is happy to access Teams via his mobile, so he can see if his teachers have posted or respond to his friends. Plus he can see messages from Academy as they've started an online transition to S1.

The youngest is using Seesaw, which they'd already been using in school, so no problem there either. Until last week, when it updated and is no longer supported on the Amazon Fire tablet . Still able to use it via Chromebook and my phone, so more irritating than problematic, but it means sharing a computer with older siblings.

Thanks, it seems seesaw might be better for the younger primary classes. Its ultimately up to the school what system they go with, they were just asking parents opinions. Which is tricky to give as we don't know seesaw. Ultimately I hope we don't need either and get back into the classroom full time as soon as poss, but I think I may be optimistic!