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Seesaw Product Updates 2023

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Seesaw Product Updates for September 14, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update devices to 9.7.1 for these changes. 

See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Messages Search: Search in Messages — supports searching for person names, classes, message thread labels, as well as content/keyword search and “fuzzy” search (better handling for misspellings and typos). 

  • Formative Assessment Reporting in Student Post View: Show scores and detailed reporting in the single student post view to teachers, students, families and admins.

  • Per Post Visibility - Expanded Private Folders Options. When assigning activities or creating student posts, allow selecting from Teacher Only or Student and Family private folders to make some content more private, while still allowing students to see other students work in the class in general. Perfect for assessments! Private folders are a premium feature.

  • Highlights Folder - Select the Highlights folder when assigning activities, when adding student posts or by using the new shortcut to indicate a piece of student work is noteworthy. Perfect for organizing work for parent-teacher conferences and in year-over-year portfolios. Highlights folder is a premium feature.

  • Formative Assessment:

    • Question assistant now generates 5 questions, increased from 3.

    • Support bulk upload of images to Drag and Drop questions on mobile devices in addition to web.

    • Allow teachers to disconnect a label, image or shape from a drag and drop question.

  • Fix bug with Clever and Classlink login on iOS.

  • Don’t send multiple notifications to connected families if family members re-connect to a student that they are already connected to.

  • Fixed issue where edited comments on posts did not translate correctly.

  • Fixed UI display issues related to search rollout on older mobile devices.

  • Fixed issue where the “Family Messaging” option showed up incorrectly in Class Settings from the School Dashboard.

Seesaw Product Updates for September 14, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update devices to 9.6 for these changes. 

See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Messages Reactions: We now support emoji reactions in Messages. :tada: 

  • Set Practice or Assessment Mode When Assigning an Activity: Choose which type of feedback students will see on questions and apply that setting across all questions in an activity. Select from Practice Mode, Assessment Mode or Mixed Mode. 

  • Improvements for Assigning Activities to Multiple Classes: Allow teachers who teach multiple classes to quickly select classes first, then on the next screen adjust details.  

  • Fix bug where teachers were unable to delete pages from student activity responses.

  • Fix bug where student display name field showed the incorrect information.

  • Fix bug to limit student name editing permissions for non-clever/ClassLink students.

  • Implemented admin facing add/remove trusted domain feature.

  • Roster Sync: Updated invalid domain copy for sync errors.

Seesaw Product Updates for August 30, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update iOS and Android devices to 9.4 for these changes.
See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 
  • Formative Assessment Reporting: Add Overall Score to activity-level reporting for activities with multiple questions.
  • Formative Assessment Search in Community Library: If an activity has formative assessment. questions on it, boost it in search results in the Community Library to make it easier to find new activities with assessments.
  • Updated emails sent to teachers when a new class is created to link to A Sample of Seesaw lessons for grades PK-5, and Community Library Getting Started activities for grades 6+.
  • District Dashboard: Show a roster sync status banner for Clever/Classlink districts.
  • Students now cannot edit their profile icon or display name, a top request from teachers and admins. Teachers and admins can still edit this information for them.  
  • Fix bug where the student activity link did not take teachers directly to the activity. It now does.
  • Fix bug where editing student work from the activities view did not take teachers back to the post. It now takes them back to the post, as expected. 
  • The links to the Privacy Policy, Help Center and Support Page have an icon that indicates they would open in a new tab, which was a requirement for COPPA Safe Harbor Certification.

Seesaw Product Updates for August 23, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update iOS and Android devices to 9.3 for these changes.
See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Preview as a Student mode when creating activities makes it easier for teachers to check that everything is working as they want for students without having to save and assign the activity.

  • Expanded limit for assigning to classes: Teachers and admins are now able to assign activities to any number of classes they’re a part of. We have removed the previous limit of 15 classes.

  • Fix issue with “Assign All Activities” flow in Seesaw Library: Fixed bug where activities were assigned out of order when using the “Assign All Activities” flow from a lesson in the Seesaw Library.

Seesaw Product Updates for August 16, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update Android devices to 9.2 for these changes.
See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Clever and Classlink Login on iOS: Fix bug where the app would not properly sign people in from Clever or Classlink launchpad if Seesaw was not already open in the background.

  • Formative Assessment Question Assistant: Allow option to add questions onto current page or create a new page.

  • Teacher Onboarding:

    • Fixed bug in journal empty state for activities links and start linking to new Getting Started lessons.

    • Roster Sync Status Banner: The District Dashboard will now display a status banner at the top of the page to inform District Administrators of the status of their sync. Admin will know at a glance If their sync is paused, on hold, has non blocking errors, or has no errors and is syncing as expected.

Seesaw Product Updates for August 10, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update Android devices to 9.1 for these changes.
See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Formative Assessment

    • Add support for searching for True/False questions using the Question Assistant.

    • Reference Formative Assessment features in Seesaw Premium Features Trial email.

    • Don’t draw dots on the question widget when answering questions, even if pen tools are selected.

  • Creative Tools: Single tap will play voice on any locked label, shape or image with voice on it—easier for littles!

  • CSV Roster Error Banner: CSV Roster banner will now direct Admin to contact Support when their upload has hit an error.

  • Highlight Translations: Display modal for returning users in Messages to highlight translations support for 100+ languages.

  • Student Groups: Allow teachers to upload custom profile icons for their student groups.

  • Fixed issue where activities could not be edited after they were assigned to students.

  • Fixed issue where teacher voice instructions for activities were not being saved on Android devices.

  • Fixed 500 error when deleting a ‘failed to deliver’ family invite.

  • Fixed UI issue where student names were cut off in student list display.

Seesaw Product Updates for August 2, 2023
Available On All Platforms. Please update iOS and Android devices to 9.0 for these changes.
See what's new on Seesaw for Back to School 2023! 

  • Formative Assessment and Reporting: Add multiple choice, true/false, poll and drag and drop assessment questions to activities. Search for questions using our AI-powered question assistant. Reporting views in Activities and Progress show student scores and help teachers know immediately who needs more support. Formative Assessments is a paid feature.
  • Formative Assessment Activities in Resource Library: To support teachers in adopting our new tools, we have featured collections in the Community Library and Seesaw Library with ready-to-use assessments perfect for the start of the year:  
  • Updates to Activity Assign Flow and Teacher Activities Tab: Improvements to Assign Activity and Create/Edit Activity flows to make it easier to create, differentiate, and plan instruction on Seesaw. Replace the “long list” view for teachers of assigned activities in their classes with a helpful weekly planner view. Add Due Dates as a new paid feature for activities. 
  • Journal Filtering Enhancements: Support filtering by student, student group, folder, skill and date range in the Journals tab for teachers and students to make it even easier to navigate student portfolios.
  • Creative Tools - Infinite Clone Tool: Teachers can set an infinite clone setting on any shape, image or label. Students then drag as many as they need to complete the activity. A huge time saver for activities featuring math manipulatives, word maps, and more!
  • Creative Tools Lock: Address a top teacher pain point and do not allow students to unlock objects locked by teachers on assignments, plus automatically lock all formative assessment questions and Frames.
  • Fix accessibility issue with Messaging Shortcuts so that they are keyboard accessible

Seesaw Product Updates for July 27, 2023

Available On All Platforms

Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.33 for these changes:

  • Highlight Translations: Display the “Translate with Google” button for notes, captions, and comments in the user’s device language.
  • Creative Tools - Web: Fix bug where Draw+Record screen recording would not properly resume after taking a photo with the camera while recording.

Product Updates for July 19, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.32 for these changes:

  • Share Activity Links with Messaging: Support shortcuts to share activity links via Messaging with teachers and students from the Resource Library and Activities Tab. Note these sharing links are not yet implemented in the new Activities Tab, and will be updated ahead of the new Activities Tab launch. 

  • Highlight Translations: Display the “Translate with Google” button for messages in the user’s device language.

Product Updates for July 12, 2023
Available On All Platforms

Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.31 for these changes:

  • Fixed issue impacting Android devices so that the region setting is used to display the correct localized date format.

  • Fixed issue impacting tablet devices so that tapping on the student’s name once filters to the student’s work. Don’t show “hover” options (ex. “Message Family”) in the student list on tablet devices.

  • Messages: Show translated languages in the message info panel so that teachers and admins can see the list of languages that messages were translated into.

  • Messages: Display “system messages” to make message thread changes visible (ex. Recipients added or removed, message type or label updated).

Product Updates for June 23, 2023

Available On All Platforms

Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.29 for these changes:

  • Unified Translations: Support 100+ languages for machine translation for post comments, captions, and notes, up from 55 languages previously. (Messages already supports machine translation into 100+ languages.) Show in the family access modal that 100+ languages are supported for translations. List of supported languages here.

Product Updates for June 15, 2023
Available On All Platforms

Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.28 for these changes:

  • Formative Assessment: Our external beta program has kicked off! Seesaw Ambassadors, Certified Educators and select district partners now have access to a beta of our formative assessment features. This program allows us to get additional product feedback and our most passionate customers a chance to create content using these tools over the summer. Formative assessment questions tool and reporting will be available to all paid customers in early August.  

  • Minor bugfixes and UI/copy clean-up throughout Messages experience.

  • Show the name of the class teacher(s) in downloaded family invite PDFs, no matter who generates the invite.

Product Updates for June 7, 2023
Available On All Platforms

Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.27 for these changes:

  • Fix bug with accessing microphone on iOS for Draw+Record and Voice features.
  • Fix 500 error impacting submission of activities to Community Library.

Seesaw Updates for May 25, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.25 for these changes:

  • Improvements to multimedia upload reliability on iOS devices.

Seesaw Updates for May 17, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.24 for these changes:

  • Improvements to multimedia uploads on iOS.
  • Fix bug where photos added to posts would hide when switching pages on iOS.
  • Fix bug where it was briefly not possible to change your own profile icon.
  • Messages: fix bug where “View Translation” button was briefly not visible in Messages.

Seesaw Updates for May 10, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.23 for these changes:

  • Top Teacher Feature Request: Office hours is now available for all teachers and admins! Teachers and admins can set “office hours” to specify days and times when they want to receive app notifications. Outside of office hours, all Seesaw notifications will be muted, and families will see when teachers are outside of office hours in message threads. 
  • Messaging Shortcuts! The following “Share with Messaging” shortcuts are now available:
    • Message students or connected families from the student list in the class journal (Note: web only).
    • Share student progress summary with connected families via Messaging (Note: Progress is a Seesaw for Schools feature).
  • Creative Tools: Additional usability improvements for Frames.

Seesaw Updates for May 3, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.22 for these changes:

  • Messages: Show “Messages” header above left “inbox” panel only instead of across the width of the page and minor icon color adjustments.
  • Creative Tools - Frames: Assortment of usability fixes for voice frames, transparent background style for frames.

Seesaw Updates for April 28, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.21.1 for these changes:

  • Messages: Fixed an issue where some iOS users could not see the “Schedule” option on iOS devices due to a bug with enabling the feature.
  • Messages: Hide link previews when there are more than 2 links in a message.
  • Creative Tools - Frames Improvements: Address additional teacher and student feedback on Frames, including the ability to resize Frames to a mini size (great for Text and Voice frames!).
  • Skills Improvements: Additional improvements to skills search.

Seesaw Updates for April 13, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.19 for these changes:

  • Top Teacher Feature Request: Scheduled messages is now available for all paid teachers and admins. Teachers and admins can schedule any message (announcement or 1:1/group conversation) to send at a later date or time.
  • Add icons for Frames into the set of Seesaw tool icons that can be added to student instructions for activities. 
  • Creative tools Improvements: Add a 10 second timer option to the camera self timer on the web, allow rotating locked-size shapes and images, offer more reorder options in (...) menu, and use correct cursors for click vs move actions on the web 
  • Skills Improvements: Allow searching for skills with symbols, and allow searching for skills across all grade levels when adding skills to an activity in My Library. 

Seesaw Product Updates for April 6, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.18 for these changes:

  • Student Groups improvements: Add option to filter by Student Groups in the Journal tab. Student Groups now work for tagging and filtering across Activities, Journal and Progress tabs.
  • Google SSO: Upgrade Google SSO library
  • Messages: Fixed edge case issue impacting threads with multiple teachers/admins so that the “private reply” shortcut opens the correct 1:1 conversation thread.
  • Android Draw+Record: Fix bug with recording draw+record videos on Android 31
  • Creative Tools: Show rotate button on shapes and images when set to “lock size” so that it’s easier for students to use shapes like pattern blocks without accidentally resizing them

Seesaw Product Updates for March 31, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.17 for these changes:

  • Messages: Fixed issue so that teachers can still send announcements with multiple co-teacher senders even if school settings restrict teacher 1:1/group messaging.
  • Messages: To determine if message threads should allow replies, check the permissions for the teacher and admin owners in addition to the original author, to reduce confusion from message threads that were unexpectedly closed due to messages settings updates.
  • Messages: Improve visual clarity of private replies to attachment-only announcements.
  • Fix bug where Draw+Record videos did not upload properly on 3G network connections.
  • Show Private Teacher-Only folder in the folders list on the tag folders screen for paid teachers who have access to this feature.

Seesaw Product Updates for March 22, 2023
Available On All Platforms
Please update iOS and Android devices to 8.16 for these changes:

  • Student Groups improvements: Let teachers tag student groups in the Post to Student Journal flow and Edit People option from the [...] menu on posts. 
  • Journal tab - Calendar View: Fix an issue where the week view would be reset to the month view after filtering by folder
  • Skills: When creating a new skill as part of a new activity, make sure the new skill stays attached to the activity.
  • Notifications: Fixed display issues for weekly family activity notifications for teachers, and change “parents” language to “families.”
  • Notifications: Fixed email and SMS notifications issue where symbols such as “&” did not show up correctly in messages notifications.
  • Messages: Improve visual clarity of private replies to attachment-only announcements.

Seesaw Product Updates for March 16, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS devices to 8.15 to get these changes. Android does not have an update this week. 

  • Improvements in creative tools to use less device memory, which will increase performance on older devices and overall reliability
  • Cache posts in the Journal tab for teachers to improve performance and reduce load times

Seesaw Product Updates for March 10, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.14 to get these changes:

Available on all platforms:

  • Frames bug fix: Place multipage draw+record videos in their appropriate frame.
  • Messages: Moved “Create New Thread” button to the top of the screen on mobile apps, matching the desktop and mobile web experience.
  • Messages: Fixed issue impacting Seesaw Basic (free) teacher access to Messaging when teachers have 200+ archived classes.
  • Messages Usability: Simpler and clearer Messaging hint-text and informational banners to clarify when School Settings do not allow families to reply to teacher announcements and teachers can start group conversations.
  • Messages: Fixed issue when teachers or admins try to send messages to large class recipient groups so that message sending doesn’t time out.

Available on the Web:

  • Top Admin Request: District-Level Messaging Settings! Allow district admins to select messaging settings that will apply to all the schools within their district.
  • District-Level Bulk Class Archival Tool: District Admins are now able to initiate bulk class archivals district-wide from their District Admin Dashboard. 
  • Fix bug with camera access permissions in Incognito browsers

Seesaw Product Updates for Feb 23rd, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.12 to get these changes

Available on all platforms:

  • Messages Usability: Simpler and clearer Messaging empty states for families and teachers, and hint-text to clarify when families can reply to teacher announcements. Also, removed Messaging promotion banners and “welcome message” from the summer launch. 
  • Update the empty state of the Journal tab for teachers with zero posts in their class to promote the Resource Library and link directly to the Getting Started Collection for the class grade level. 
  • Frames bug fixes: Automatically start recording when a student clicks a Voice frame. Improvements to the Text frame.
  • Update the “Save” activity flow to allow teachers to automatically add to a collection and unsave more easily.
  • Domain validation bug fixes: updated language in errors to make it clearer when new users are being added with the wrong email domains.
  • Skills bug fixes: ensure skills stay attached to an activity when students/folders are edited; ensure skills are sorted by ascending/descending order.
  • Bug fix for incorrectly showing a “video playback not supported” error message on some Draw+Record videos. 

Available on the Web:

  • Self-timer mode for photo camera! For our friends on Chromebooks and computers with only a selfie camera, it can be tricky to get a good photo of work on a piece of paper or something in the classroom. We’ve added a self-timer button onto the camera screen that gives students a 3-second countdown before taking a photo. Additionally, pressing the space bar also works to take a photo.

Seesaw Product Updates for Feb 15, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.11 to get these changes:

  • Messages: Use localized date formatting in Messaging.
  • Messages: When Seesaw Basic (free) classes are archived, display message threads in the archived folder (previously these threads would “disappear” unless the class was unarchived) and display clearer copy for archived class threads in free classes.
  • Setup & Rostering related bug fixes: archiving and unarchiving classes with no domain validation issues now working without throwing exceptions
  • Frames bug fixes: Students will see frames reappear on the canvas if they delete a photo, video, or recording they originally placed with a frame.

Available on the Web:

  • Top Teacher Feature Request: Copy & paste page between activities! Allow teachers to copy and paste pages from one activity to another for easier creation of assignments. Copy & paste page is not available for students, Journal posts or message attachments.

Seesaw Product Updates for February 10, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.10 to get these changes:

  • Messages: When Seesaw Basic (free) classes are archived, display message threads in the archived folder. Additional clean-up for free class message threads when class associations are changed.
  • Public blog: Remove the Google SSO option from public blogs. Seesaw sign-on is still supported from this page. Users can also use Google, Clever, Classlink, and Seesaw sign-in options from the main login page, and then navigate to the blog.
  • Text Frames: Allow teachers to add Frames that support student text.
  • Skills Bug Fixes: Corrected issues with users being unable to view/search for skills; implemented pagination of Skills.

Setup & Rostering related bug fixes:

  • Org Dashboard: “Assign missing studentIDs” now correctly displays students that are missing IDs in the org.
  • CSV Rostering: Org Import Status banner copy edited for clarity when an error has occurred.
  • CSV Rostering: Student with generic email being unarchived from org no longer erroneously displays teacher email in error message.
  • Roster Sync Errors no longer showing “Unknown Errors” due to error codes changing with invalid domain errors.

Seesaw Product Updates for February 2, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.9 to get these changes:

  • Prevent the device from going to sleep when uploading multimedia.
  • Fix bug where some users were stuck on a gray screen with a white bar when relaunching the app.
  • Messages: Don’t allow private replies when the announcement thread is archived.
  • Messages: Small bug fixes, visual improvements, and performance improvements with recently launched features for Suggested Recipients and Archiving.
  • Allow students to drag and drop photos, videos, and recordings into frames.
  • Update the Share Activity flow for School and District libraries to let teachers more easily select which specific library they want to share an activity with.
  • Fix bug that was preventing family members from syncing to Seesaw if they had a phone number mismatch between Seesaw and their SIS.

Seesaw Product Updates for January 26, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.8 to get these changes:

  • Frames: Smart shapes that allow students to add photos, videos, and more in designated spaces on the Seesaw canvas. This feature is now launched for all teachers and students with a “Beta” label in the product.
  • Messages: Fixed an issue impacting automatic archive from Jan 10-Jan 24; Message threads should now correctly be automatically archived when classes are archived.
  • Messages: Small bug fixes, visual improvements, and performance improvements with recently launched Messaging features for Suggested Recipients and Archiving.
  • Account Switcher: Refresh the counter for notifications for other accounts when opening the left sidebar menu.

Seesaw Product Updates for January 19, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.7 to get these changes:

  • New! Account Switcher: Easily switch between multiple accounts on the same device
  • New! Improvements to Messaging:
    • Easier experience for families to privately reply to teacher announcements
    • Teacher owners and school admins can “archive” threads for everyone
    • Message threads automatically archived when classes are archived
    • Suggested recipients for families and teachers to easily start common threads
  • Frames in Creative Tools Beta: Frames are smart shapes that allow students to add photos, videos, and more in designated spaces on the Seesaw canvas. Users can submit feedback via our in-product survey.
  • Creative tools: Fix flashing of canvas when tapping undo/redo
  • Additional audio and video playback improvements
  • Fix issue with scrollbar sometimes not appearing on Seesaw for Schools admin dashboard.
  • Update style of folders underneath posts to comply with WCAG accessibility color contrast requirements

Seesaw Product Updates for January 13, 2023
Available in This Release
Please update iOS and Android to 8.6.1 to get these changes:

  • Messages: Clarity updates to indicate when announcement recipients can or cannot privately reply.
  • Messages: Exclude archived message counts from messaging unread counts.
  • Messages: Notify recipients when a message thread was archived by a teacher or admin.
  • Messages: Increase the size of the smallest font sizes on mobile devices.
  • Messages: Show error when creating an announcement with 1000+ classes.
  • Messages: Show sender and message snippet for Messaging notifications.
  • Additional improvements to multimedia uploads.
  • Additional audio and video playback improvements.
  • Additional improvements to better detect if a device is online/offline.
  • Creative Tools: Fix bug where videos created on web from Jan 11 at 3 pm PT - Jan 12 at 1 pm PT would not playback on iOS

 

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