Seesaw's AI Philosophy

With AI-powered product features we develop at Seesaw, our goal is to save teachers time or make content in Seesaw more accessible to a wider group of students and families. Because we serve young learners at a critical developmental phase, there is “an adult in the loop” with our AI features to ensure students’ experience with Seesaw is safe, equitable and empowering. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality in Seesaw.

Product Principles 

• Center Humans: AI is not going to replace human educators or parents, and it shouldn’t. We leverage AI to give educators and families more time to do what they do best — teach their students and support their children. 
• Adult in the Loop: When AI is used, there is an adult in the loop to ensure students' experience in Seesaw is safe and equitable. Students do not have access to generative AI features, like Chatbots or text generators.  
• Disclose Use of AI: When AI is used, we disclose it in the product experience with an icon and text. 
• Human Edit or Override: Educators have the opportunity to review and edit any content generated by AI (e.g., edit an assessment question before it’s shared to students, override a grade generated from a machine voice transcription). 
• Safety, Privacy and Abuse Prevention: All AI applications adhere to Seesaw’s industry-leading safety, privacy and abuse prevention policies. 
• Consent: We will not use your data for training our AI models without your consent.

Current Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Seesaw 

Traditional AI 
Computer models trained to perform specific tasks

• Messages and Journal: Translation between 100+ languages 
  • Machine translation of messages, text comments, text captions, notes into over 100 languages to increase access to content. 
  • Available to all teachers, admins and families as of 2018 
  • Type of AI Used: Text translation model from Google Translate
  • FAQ 
• Help Chatbot for In-Product Support  
  • Help chatbot to answer technical support questions about Seesaw. 
  • Available to teachers and admins as of 2019
  • Type of AI Used: Conversational chatbot 
• Instruction and Assessment Tools: Reading Fluency Assessment and Read-with-Me Narrated Passage Tool  
  • Reading Fluency Formative Assessment allows teachers to quickly compare student reading voice recordings to a target passage. Reporting on key metrics like accuracy, words correct per minute, and detailed metrics like omissions, substitution and self-correction will be automatically generated. 
    1. Teachers will be able to override Accuracy grade from machine-generated voice transcripts of student reading recordings 
  • Read-with-Me tool allows teachers to scaffold assignments for emerging readers with passages that can be read aloud to them with word-level highlighting. This tool powerfully connects the spoken word to the written word as a passage is read. 
  • Available to Seesaw Instruction and Insights teachers, coming August 2024
  • Type of AI Used: Voice transcription model from Amazon Transcribe 

Generative AI 
Computer models trained to generate new content

• Instruction and Assessment Tools: Question Assistant 
  • The Find Questions tool allows teachers to search for Formative Assessment questions on educational topics that can be used to assess student understanding and detect misconceptions.  
  • A district and school setting is available to disable this tool 
  • Available to Seesaw for Schools and Seesaw Instruction and Insights teachers as of 2023 
  • Type of AI Used: Generative large language model, Open AI’s ChatGPT 
  • FAQ

FAQ 

How does Seesaw use AI in the platform? 
With AI-powered product features we develop at Seesaw, our goal is to save teachers time or make content in Seesaw more accessible to a wider group of students and families. Because we serve young learners at a critical developmental phase, there is “an adult in the loop” with our AI features to ensure students’ experience with Seesaw is safe, equitable and empowering. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality in Seesaw.

In the product today, we use AI for a few powerful features: 

1. Messages and Journal: Machine Translation into 100+ Languages: This tool offers machine translation of messages, text comments, text captions, notes into over 100 languages to increase access to content. It is available to all teachers, admins and families as of 2018.  
2. Instruction and Assessment Tools: Question Assistant: The Find Questions tool allows teachers to search for Formative Assessment questions on educational topics that can be used to assess student understanding and detect misconceptions. This tool is part of Seesaw for School and Seesaw Instruction and Insights plans. A district and school setting is also available to disable this tool. Question Assistant is our only product feature that uses Generative AI today.  

Coming for Back to School 2024, we’re adding two additional AI-enhanced assessment and instruction tools: Reading Fluency Assessment and Read-with-Me 

1. Reading Fluency Formative Assessment allows teachers to quickly compare student reading voice recordings to a target passage. Reporting on key metrics like accuracy, words correct per minute, and detailed metrics like omissions, substitution and self-correction will be automatically generated.
   1. Teachers will be able to override Accuracy grade from machine-generated voice transcripts of student reading recordings 
2. Read-with-Me tool allows teachers to scaffold assignments for emerging readers with passages that can be read aloud to them with word-level highlighting. This tool powerfully connects the spoken word to the written word as a passage is read. 

How does Seesaw make sure the AI is safe? 
With AI-powered product features we develop at Seesaw, our goal is to save teachers time or make content in Seesaw more accessible to a wider group of students and families. Because we serve young learners at a critical developmental phase, there is “an adult in the loop” with our AI features to ensure students’ experience with Seesaw is safe, equitable and empowering. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality in Seesaw.

We apply these principles to any AI-enhanced product experience we build: 

• Center Humans: AI is not going to replace human educators or parents, and it shouldn’t. We leverage AI to give educators and families more time to do what they do best — teach their students and support their children. 
• Adult in the Loop: When AI is used, we make sure there is an adult in the loop to ensure students' experience in Seesaw is safe and equitable. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality.  
• Disclose Use of AI: When AI is used, we disclose it in the product experience with an icon and text. 
• Human Edit or Override: Educators have the opportunity to review and edit any content generated by AI (e.g., edit an assessment question before it’s shared to students, override a grade from a machine voice transcription). 
• Safety, Privacy and Abuse Prevention: All AI applications adhere to Seesaw’s industry-leading safety, privacy and abuse prevention policies. 

Consent: We will not use your data for training our AI models without your consent.