IETA 2020

ClassDojo is an online classroom management system that I have used in multiple grade levels and all the students that have used it absolutely love it. In a nutshell, ClassDojo is a fantastic and easy way to monitor positive and negative behaviors and have students earn points for potential rewards. One of those rewards while earning positive points that I have used in the past is being able to create and change their "monster". Each students starts out with their own Dojo monster that they can customize and there are endless styles, colors, figures, and characters to choose from. Not only can you use this system to manage individual students, but there are also features that allow you to group students and give or take away points to the whole group, or to the entire class. When you are working with the points themselves, another fantastic feature is that it tells the students exactly what they did to earn points or have those points taken away. For example, some of the positive points categories are: "On Task", "Participating", "Working Hard" and some of the negative point categories are: "Off Task", "Talking Out Of Turn", "Unprepared" and any of these categories can be edited or modified by the teacher. When I used these in elementary school, I was also able to connect the parents to our ClassDojo and it was an excellent way for them to see how their student was progressing or how they did in class that day. You can also send emails, post pictures, and add class stories to the site! Teachers have the capability to add and create as many Dojo classes as they need, which is a great feature for middle school and high school teachers. One incredible new addition that they just created this year is student mode. In this mode, students can add their own private stories that only their parents will be able to see and the teacher approves all posts. Some other excellent teacher tools within ClassDojo are: the ability to take attendance, use a class timer, randomize which students should earn points, and then there are two additional tabs called "Big Ideas" and "Toolkit". All of these features can be accessed directly from the site or the app within the app store for free! One thing I absolutely love about the "Big Ideas" tab is that you can create little mini social-emotional lessons for your students about growth mindset, perseverance, empathy, gratitude and mindfulness. These mini video lessons are put into words students can understand and are excellent ways to start the day off on a very positive note. Within the "Toolkit" tab, you can do even MORE such as: post class directions for the day, play music for the class while they work, there is a group maker for group work days, a noise meter to watch how loud the class gets, Think-Pair-Share, and a "Today" feature to greet students with an introduction message. You can still access all of these things through a computer, but for easy access and less problems, it is recommended that teachers and students use the free app. Some anticipated outcomes for this presentation would be to have teachers play around with this app, so they would need some sort of device to practice on, but cellphones work as well. I would go through all of the basics I mentioned above and if my given time slot allows, I would go into the details about the additional "Big Ideas" and the "Toolkit" features. ClassDojo has completely changed the way my classroom runs and I have been complimented many times on how well my management is. I credit that success to ClassDojo and everything it has helped me with. I would highly recommend teachers to use this and look forward to the potential opportunity to show other teachers how this amazing free app can be utilized.