ClassDojo

Commentaires: Positively rewarding and motivating students

Avantages: Class Dojo is like a teacher's digital classroom management assistant! There's lots to love!
- First, it's free. Who doesn't like free?
- Next, it's extremely user-friendly. Within 15 minutes you can set-up and learn to navigate the features and layout. In just 5 more minutes, you can roll it out to your classroom. Teacher's are already lacking time, and the simplicity of this platform is wonderful.
- It's versatile! You can use it systematically as an everyday part of your lesson - managing and tracking behavior and learning data or you can use it for a much less intensive purpose like tracking time, adding audio cues for your students, keeping a scoreboard during a game, etc.
- Parents can link with their students to learn more. This creates a paperless communication system between the student and home.
- They've recently added a digital portfolio piece for students. I'm still new and exploring, but this looks to be a powerful addition that students/teachers could use for creating and sharing assignments (reducing paper). It seems to also have built-in features (activities), too. Excited to learn more!
- Last but not least, I suppose my favorite, yet simple, reason I love ClassDojo is that it just reminds me to be positive. I can focus on the positive I see in students and reward and reinforce their positive behavior.

Inconvénients: This is not a con to ClassDojo, but just an observation - ClassDojo will not solve all of your classroom management issues. It is not a quick, easy fix, so don't view it that way. You have to carefully consider usage if you want this to be a main ingredient in your classroom. In that train of thought, it could cause students to act even more negatively because they're now able to gain a bigger audience and receive more attention. Once again, this is not a ClassDojo problem, I just want future users to be aware.

Commentaires: It has helped behavior improve in my classroom tremendously. Students know that if I give or take a point, their teacher knows immediately. It's also a great way to communicate easily with parents. Most parents have a mobile phone and they tend to check their phones frequently. It is faster than email.

Avantages: I like that students/classes can be shared with other teachers. If a student does well in Art or has an issue in Music, that teacher can click on Dojo and either give or take away Dojo points from the student. You don't have to wait until the student returns to the classroom and try to find time to talk to the teacher about the issue. It is super quick and easy to use. Bring your ClassDojo up on a computer, iPad, cell phone, etc. and have it open and ready for use. When you need to give or add points, you can do so immediately. If I give a point to a student in my room, the teacher is automatically notified on her device with the point popping up on the student's icon. It's a great way to communicate not only between classrooms regarding shared students, but also with parents that sign up. It includes an email feature with parents that is super handy.

Inconvénients: Sometimes it is a little tricky to set up the sharing of a classroom with other teachers. It would be nice to have more of a step by step set of directions to go along with Class Dojo. The directions are included, but it would be helpful if they were more concise and step by step and addressed each area.