Class Dojo

CLASS DOJO

Class Dojo has been spreading like wildfire in classrooms all over the US. It has truly transformed the way that I do business in my 9-12 classroom. 

OVERVIEW

Class Dojo allows teachers to award dojo points to students to increase positive behaviors and decrease negative behaviors. Behaviors are recorded and tracked so teachers, students and parents can check up on student behavior.

COST
Free

KEY FEATURES

• Parental Involvement: Students and parents can set up accounts through classdojo.com with a teacher generated code. It has helped me lead more productive parent teacher conferences when I can hand a printout of all of the students behaviors. It also automatically generates a weekly behavior update email to parents.
• Immediate Reinforcement: If projected in front of the class, students recognize the behaviors that are less favorable and more favorable and know immediately when they are being exhibited. I have so many students fighting over a chance to participate or help out other students to increase their positive behavior points. Many students even say "I'm not going to disrupt the class any more, I can't get any more negative points."
• Standards-Based Grading Solution: Many schools are heading towards a 100/0 system, meaning 100% of your grade is based on the knowledge that you have displayed on some form of assessment and 0% of your grade is based on classwork, participation, work ethic and behavior. In our school we still value the 0% and struggle with a way to show their work ethic and behavior. Class Dojo gives me the opportunity to keep the value of the 0% visible and important to students and parents.
• Positive Learning Environment: I frequently see students looking for ways to increase their positive dojo points. When they're rewarded for their efforts, many of their classmates mimic the positive behaviors. It helps create and sustain a positive learning environment.
• iPad/Android App: It comes equipped with an easy to use app that allows you to track dojo points on the fly.
• Timer and Random Name Generator: We all use these two tools on a daily basis in some form. Now it's all incorporated into the website and app (timer not in app yet). 

IMPROVEMENTS
Class Dojo has a great customer support and frequently push out updates that were recommended and supported by teachers.

• Age Appropriate: My Juniors and Seniors found the avatars to be childish and didn't take the program seriously at first. Granted, we would hope by their junior and senior years, we wouldn't need it to curb behavior. I would imagine this system would make an even greater impact at the elementary level.
• Push Notifications: The app and website do nice push notifications while the console is up, but it would be nice to see notifications pushed on top of whatever is being projected. I often have Class Dojo running in the background on my projector while I have another site or worksheet up, so it makes it difficult for students to see when they are getting dojo points.