The Brock Tech Showcase

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop at the Brock Tech Showcase. The topic of my workshop was Sesame HQ.  I had briefly mentioned Sesame in one of my earlier blog posts, but after having used it in the classroom, I had to share my experience with others.

Sesame is a new Canadian application designed specifically for educators, and is completely free for teachers. The main purpose of Sesame is to give teachers an easy and effective way to create unit and lesson plans, and organize student assessment data. 

With Sesame, all of your data is stored online or "in the cloud", and is accessible via computer, tablet, and smart phone. Sesame allows you to create formative and summative assessments such as anecdotal notes, rubrics, checklists and rating scales, or photographs of student work.

From the planning perspective, my favourite features of Sesame is the embedded curriculum expectations. The creators of Sesame have already input the Ontario Curriculum into Sesame, making it easy to insert curriculum expectations into all forms of assessment!

From the perspective of sharing student data, my favourite feature of Sesame is the authentic student portfolios that are created as you post more data onto Sesame. Each student has their own profile, where you can post their work, or anecdotal notes.  Eventually, you can share these portfolios with the students, the student's parents/guardians, or simply keep them for your own records. 

Sesame has both an application called SNAP, or a web-based version of the application which can be accessed here:  https://sesamehq.com/dashboard

I highly encourage you to experience Sesame first-hand, and wish you the best of luck! 

How do you see yourself using Sesame? 

For updates on teaching with technology follow the Brock Tech Showcase:  @BrockTechPD 
For updates from Amrina, my Brock Tech Showcase co-presenter: @MissVisram