With the idea that it takes a village to raise a child, teachers are appreciative when parents are involved with their child’s education. Monitoring, assessing, and grading a student’s learning and behavior and then relaying that information to administration and parents, are some of the more challenging of teacher duties. Online tech is opening a new era where the walls of the classroom are disappearing and parents can be more engaged on a daily basis.
In my previous post, I talked about Google Classroom; an online classroom management system. In this post, I’m going to focus on ClassDojo; an online behavior management system built on fostering positive student behavior and a classroom culture where parents are more intimately involved. With a ‘gamified’ interface, individual students, groups, or whole classrooms earn positive or negative ‘Dojo Points’ based on their behavior. Teachers use the app to keep parents up to date on student progress and daily classroom activities. ClassDojo is free for all users and available across many desktop and mobile platforms.
ClassDojo has been translated into 35 languages in 180 countries. The management system has penetrated 90% of U.S. schools.
Criticism of ClassDojo as a behavioral management system include the focus on extrinsic versus intrinsic reward systems as well as concerns about online privacy.
Click on these links to learn more about ClassDojo, watch an introductory video below, or read a product overview of ClassDojo from EdSurge.
Take a look at the reviews and tutorials below. Is this the kind of class management system that would work well with your school, students, and parents?
A teacher-narrated video explaining the ClassDojo app
ClassDojo – The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly
Forbes Magazine article on 2 ClassDojo classrooms
If you are interested in other management systems like Google Classroom and Schoology, check out this list of the most popular platforms where you can read brief reviews and compare pricing. Also, be sure to check my third post in this series on LMSs for K-12.
If you have experience on a particular platform, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Help a teacher out and leave a comment below.
As always, best of luck in your classes!
Donald Kinney