I have been using ClassDojo as a behaviour management system for a couple of years now. I am a ClassDojo Mentor for my school and an Australian ClassDojo Ambassador. Back then, I just focused on the 'Positive' and 'Negative' (now called 'needs work') behaviours, resetting the points each day. I love the random child feature, which I use to keep all of the kids on their toes when answering questions. I find the visual and auditory aspect of giving points in ClassDojo a fantastic motivator for my students.
And then they released the app!
This changed everything.
All it took was for me to take my iPad to the lines at the end of lunch and silently start giving out 'lining up' points to my Year One students. No more "Hurry up and line up" screams across the noisy playground - once kids started hearing the shrill of points being given out, whispers of "she's giving out Dojos" rippled up the line right to the back where the more challenging kids were throwing their lunchboxes up into the air. It was like an army general had just walked in and made them line up to attention.
Suddenly, library time was painless with the addition of my iPad following us to lines. During school assemblies, I'd mute the iPad but the kids knew I was giving out points, and eagerly anticipated returning to the classroom to see how many points they received.
For some of the more challenging students, I'd pull them to one side and show them the visual graphs of their behaviour. I let them know that if their behaviour does not improve, I can show this to their parents - and this sends a chill down their spine. Yes, there is the feature to allow parents access to the reports and I love this, but at the time I was working with a community where there was a distinct line between the 'haves' and 'have nots' and I did not want to disadvantage any of my students.
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| An example of a graph showing positive and needs work behaviours |
Any now *drumroll* my favourite feature - ClassStory.
One of the biggest issues we face as teachers in a digital world is the privacy of our students. Yet, with so many working parents, whom we hardly see, giving them a window into the classroom is a must. Social media platforms such as Twitter are fantastic, however parent permission is needed to place our students' images into the public forum. I have previously used Google Sites, which parents needed to access with their child's login. This worked well but the editing of pages to add students' work required time and a PC due to editing limitations on iPads.
ClassStory looks just like a Facebook feed, however the content is contained securely within the ClassDojo platform. Parents can easily view this window into your classroom and 'like' content, just like other social media platforms. Teachers can easily send out reminders and share classroom. My favourite feature is that you can easily snap and post content from your Smart Phone. This means that you can post classroom experiences to parents in real time in just seconds! No need to find the time to do it later. I know when I had my class site, I was extremely guilty of forgetting to upload content to the virtual classroom section of our site.
The potential of this feature is limitless. My first initial thought is to allow a child or two a day (or hour) in charge of an iPad. This child's job is to document a task or the school day using photos. At the end of the day or session, this child uses a scrapbooking or annotation app, such as PicCollage, Strip Designer or Skitch to create a single image with words and images to share their day or their learning. That image is saved to the camera and all you need to do as the teacher is to log into ClassDojo and upload it on ClassStory. You don't even need to worry about finding time to get a post sorted. Parents are more than likely going to log in to check your class' ClassStory page if they know their child has contributed or will be featured.
I can't wait to try out this new feature when I go back to work next year, and I can't wait to see how ClassDojo evolves their product in the future.
Don't forget that the ClassDojo Australian and New Zealand Ambassadors host a Twitter chat every Wednesday fortnight at 7pm AEST. Save the hashtag #dojochatanz to your Tweetdeck! Follow ClassDojo Australia and New Zealand on Twitter and or join the Facebook group.
