Class Dojo

A good friend of mine came across an interesting classroom management program called Class Dojo, and it's something I think I'd like to try. So far it seems to be in beta and is a free download. Their site description says, "Improve student behavior and engagement by awarding and recording real-time feedback."

I quickly set up two classes and changed the little icons. The children might even like to choose their own icon.

Then I edited my behavior expectations. Since I teach in the computer lab I set up these choices:

You can add more categories, but I do wish they had a few more icons to choose from in this section.

The idea is that you can use this program on your interactive board (or, in my case, just projected onto a screen). When a child earns a positive or negative behavior mark you just tap their name and choose the mark, giving immediate feedback. You can have the program running in the background on your interactive board and a box pops up when you mark a child. They say you can use your smart phone or iPad to do the marks. I couldn't seem to log on to the site on my android phone, but I'm going to keep trying.

Another great feature about this program is that at the end of the week or marking period you can quickly see what marks the class has learned as a group or individually. And you can email the parents a copy of their child's report with added comments.

Dilemma

I've been wanting to start a Tech Lab blog this whole year, but couldn't decide whether to let my students blog or just write about things I'm doing in the lab. It's amazing how quickly the year has gone by, and this year has had a lot of distractions. In the interest of finally starting something, I'm going to keep this blog for myself and work on student blogs later.