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EmailClassDojo is a tool that helps teachers, especially those with younger learners, deliver feedback on student performance to students and parents. It popped up on my radar again recently and I was surprised to discover that I had not yet written anything up on it yet, so let’s see what it is all about.
ClassDojo can be used as both a website or an app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices, thus making it very versatile. For today’s purposes, I will mostly be examining it through the website. The main page has a nice introductory video and a summary of all the things that you can do with ClassDojo. For students, for example, you can encourage them and track their progress, while for parents, you can send messages, images, and announcements with read receipts so that you know who has seen the information. Additionally, the home page has testimonials and promotes the fact that ClassDojo is completely free for teachers. Based on the overall design of ClassDojo, you can immediately tell that, like GoNoodle, it is really geared towards younger learners, probably K–6.
To get started, you have to register for an account. To do that, click “Sign up” and choose “Teacher.” Then complete the form with your name, email address, and password. That is it! Now you are ready to explore all that ClassDojo can do. The first step is really to experiment, which you can do by working from your dashboard and playing around with the demo class that is provided for you. Then you will want to create your own classes and add your students to them. Finally, if you run into any issues, read through the tips that are available on the website or even visit YouTube to find tutorials. I have found some excellent reviews and tutorials created by educators on all sorts of resources, so YouTube has become my go to for learning new things.
When you are viewing a class in ClassDojo, you will see that the main features are arranged under three tabs. The first one is Classroom. In Classroom you can award plus points to students or groups of students for positive actions and give them minus points for inappropriate classroom behavior. Use points as a way of instantly communicating with students that they are doing a great job on and where they need to improve. Using ClassDojo will allow you to quickly provide this feedback, so that you can focus more on teaching and less on classroom management during class time. Review the reports outside of class to help you spot trends on class and individual performance. The second tab is Class Story, which resembles a simplified version of a Facebook profile. This is what you use to share what is going on in your class. The last tab is Messages, where you can communicate directly with parents. Use the data from reports to tailor your feedback for parents throughout the year.
ClassDojo seems pretty awesome, but you do not have to take my word for it. Visit Graphite to read a review where it is ranked four out of five stars (by teachers). There are also over 100 reviews from teachers that use ClassDojo, so you can see what other educators are saying about it. If you have already started using ClassDojo, leave a review on Graphite while you are there to help other educators considering adopting it—and/or leave one here!
How would you use ClassDojo? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts and experiences with this and other similar tools.
