Seesaw’s Approach to AI

  Audience: Seesaw Users
 

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

Product Principles 

• Put People First: AI will not replace human educators or parents, nor should it. We use 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 fair. Students do not have access to generative AI features, such as Chatbots or text generators. 
• Disclose Use of AI: When AI is used, we make this clear 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 with students, override a grade generated from a machine voice transcription).
• Safety, Privacy and Abuse Prevention: All AI applications comply with Seesaw’s industry-leading safety, privacy and abuse prevention policies.
• Consent: We will not use your data to train 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, and notes into over 100 languages to increase access to content.
  • Available to all teachers, admins and families.
  • 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.
  • 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. Reports on key metrics such as accuracy, words correct per minute, and detailed metrics like omissions, substitutions and self-corrections are automatically generated. Teachers can override the accuracy grade from machine-generated voice transcripts of student reading recordings.
  • The 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.
  • 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 identify misconceptions. 
  • A district and school setting is available to disable this tool.
  • Available to Seesaw for Schools and Seesaw Instruction and Insights teachers.
  • Type of AI Used: Generative large language model, Open AI’s ChatGPT.
  • FAQ

FAQ 

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

Currently, we use AI for several powerful features: 

1. Messages and Journal: Machine Translation into 100+ Languages: This tool provides machine translation of messages, text comments, text captions, and notes into over 100 languages to increase access to content.
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 identify misconceptions. This tool is part of Seesaw for Schools and Seesaw Instruction and Insights plans. A district and school setting is also available to disable this tool. Question Assistant is currently our only product feature that uses Generative AI. 
3. Reading Fluency Formative Assessment allows teachers to quickly compare student reading voice recordings to a target passage. Reports on key metrics such as accuracy, words correct per minute, and detailed metrics like omissions, substitutions and self-corrections are automatically generated.
4. Teachers can override the accuracy grade from machine-generated voice transcripts of student reading recordings.
5. 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 the AI-powered product features we develop at Seesaw, our aim is to save teachers time or make content in Seesaw more accessible to a wider group of students and families. As we serve young learners at a crucial stage of development, there is always “an adult in the loop” with our AI features to ensure students’ experience with Seesaw is safe, fair and empowering. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality in Seesaw.

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

• Put People First: AI will not replace human educators or parents, nor should it. We use 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 ensure there is an adult in the loop to make sure students' experience in Seesaw is safe and fair. Students do not have access to generative AI functionality. 
• Disclose Use of AI: When AI is used, we make this clear 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 with students, override a grade from a machine voice transcription).
• Safety, Privacy and Abuse Prevention: All AI applications comply with Seesaw’s industry-leading safety, privacy and abuse prevention policies. 

Consent: We will not use your data to train our AI models without your consent.