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Class Dojo - Digital Classroom Management & Community Building | UPDATED

9/11/2015

28 Comments

 
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Class Dojo is a free web, iOS, and android app that is designed to help with classroom management, student engagement, and community building.  It's an excellent tool to keep track of student behavior, attendance, and to connect with parents.  Plus, it's incredibly simple and easy to use!  So...Let's check it out!

Before we dig into the review, here's a short introductory video from the Class Dojo team to better show you what the app is all about.


As mentioned, Class Dojo is an awesome way to track student behavior, take attendance, encourage collaboration, involve parents, and a whole lot more.  Plus, they've recently added messaging features and their new Class Story, which makes it easy and safe for parents to share photos and updates from the classroom with parents.

So with that in mind, let's take a stroll through the actual app.  After you sign in to Class Dojo, you'll be presented with a sample class to help learn the basics of the program.  You can start by clicking on any student in your class to award them positive or negative points based on their behavior.

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Click on a student to award him or her behavior points.
 
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Positive Feedback
 
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Negative Feedback

And don't worry, if you're not a fan of the awards available, you can easily add your own under the settings menu.  This is also where you can edit student information and change the setup of your class:

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The Class Settings Menu

If you click on the "Edit Students and Behaviors" button, you'll be able to change or add students, modify the behavior awards, and change the basic info of the class.  Plus, if you've already set up one class the way you like, you can import that information into all your other classes:

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Update and change the behavior awards

Now that you've got your behavior awards set up they way you want, let's take a look at some of the other great features of Class Dojo.  First up, you've got a timer!  No more scouring the web for a cheesy flash timer, they've got one built in!

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The Built-in Timer Feature

Plus, if you're in need of a random student volunteer, you can click the "Random" button and the program will choose one for you.

And to make attendance-taking easier, Class Dojo has that feature as well.  Just click on "attendance", select the students who are absent, hit save, and you're done!  

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Take attendance too!

And if you're not in love with these monster avatars, when you create your own class you have the option to upload your own images or icons for each student as well.

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Upload your own avatars if you don't like the ones provided

So those are all the in-class features that Class Dojo offers, but there are some wonderful out-of-class features that really make the app outstanding.  First up, Class Dojo records and graphs all of your behavior information for your students.  This way, you can get a quick snapshot of exactly  how well each student is doing:

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Donut Graph of student behavior
 
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TrendSpotter Graph of student behavior

On top of that, you can also link parent accounts directly into your class, this way parents will have a continuous update on their student's behavior.  It's an incredibly easy way to keep parents in the loop and a huge time-saver for educators as well.

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Link parent accounts so they can monitor their student's behavior

Finally, if there are other teachers in your school using Class Dojo, you can quickly link to your school with the "Join Your School" button.  This way, you can connect and share information with the other teachers in your building.

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Join your school and connect with the rest of your campus

Plus, if you have an iPad, iPhone, or Android tablet, you can get the mobile Class Dojo app so you can manage behavior from around the classroom without being tied to your computer all the time.
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Manage behavior on-the-go with the mobile app
Finally, as I mentioned way back at the beginning, Class Dojo has just released their "Class Story" feature which is designed to give teachers the space to easily and share classroom updates with parents.  

When parents login to the app, they'll be immediately presented with a news feed from their child's classroom, complete with photos and updates from the teacher.  This way, the teacher can share important and enjoyable moments, without having to worry about them being made public on a class website or blog.  In addition to already being able to message parents directly, Class Story is an excellent addition to what was already a robust app.
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Overall, this program is absolutely awesome, and I've used it at the middle school, high school, and even university level.  It's great for monitoring and recording student behavior, especially since it graphs everything for easy analysis.  

Plus, students can create their own accounts to keep an eye on their behavior as well.  And being able to link parent accounts is an excellent feature that I think most teachers would love.  All in all, it's a wonderful program that I think can really help with classroom and behavior management!

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28 Comments
lulu morales gairca link
9/22/2013 03:35:30 am

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lulu morales garcia link
9/22/2013 03:38:15 am

i dont have a coment


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jennifer link
10/7/2013 12:31:45 pm

i like it

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Mike Karlin
10/7/2013 09:15:08 pm

Great to hear! I've been a big fan of it this year as well!

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jennifer link
10/7/2013 12:32:29 pm

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an unappy mother
10/31/2013 01:48:56 am

I don't find focusing on a child's negative behavior is all that motivating to the child. I find that most children are motivated by positive reinforcement or their own internal driver, but then are humiliated if they get negative points and have to play catch up. The teachers that rarely give out negatives are the teachers I admire. I'd rather have one child with 82 pos points and my child with 55, than someone having negative points. Negative focuses on negative.

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Mike Karlin
10/31/2013 02:42:37 am

I completely agree! And that's why I'm glad Class Dojo offers the options for positive points as well. It lends itself to creating that kind of environment. I've found I only use the negative points in my high school classes as a quick way to keep track of who has completed a daily assignments and who forgot to do it, or which students don't participate in a discussion. And for those, I keep it as a personal record, not public, so then there's no humiliation for those students. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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wanda suero
1/31/2014 01:34:11 pm

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ricardo martinez link
11/8/2014 02:15:00 pm

Its Aswome

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Christian Baskerville link
1/17/2015 05:18:50 am

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ally link
2/6/2015 08:19:39 am

asweome

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mackenzie link
3/21/2015 02:43:57 am

i love class dojo

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Paul link
6/13/2015 01:57:22 am

How to change my avatar on class dojo

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Suzanne greer link
6/23/2015 01:48:47 am

How do you sign in

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Mike Karlin
6/23/2015 04:08:10 am

Hi Suzanne -

When you open the app you should see the sign in screen, or when you go to the website you can sign in at the top right. If you've forgotten your password you can click on the forgot password link. Hope that helps and thanks for reading!

Mike

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Jean
8/19/2015 04:35:22 am

Is there a way to make attendance public to the parents so that they know their child has made it to class?

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Mike Karlin
8/19/2015 10:37:18 am

Hi Jean, thanks for reading!

You should be able to give parents a login code (much like you give the students) so that they're able to see their child's attendance. Hope that helps!

Mike

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Ashley groesser
9/30/2015 10:39:00 am

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Lisa Dunne
11/5/2015 08:30:53 am

My child's teacher posted some photos in class dojo that she took at an awards assembly. Can I save those to my phone from the class dojo app?

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Mike
11/5/2015 11:09:51 am

Hi Lisa!

If there isn't an option to save the image, I would suggest taking a screen shot of the image and saving it to your phone that way. Hope that helps!

Mike

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Elijah link
11/12/2015 12:48:36 pm

clss dojo is awsome

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Donald King
11/14/2015 02:38:19 pm

I understand technology and our society moving forward in technology. I will have to say though I VERY MUCH DISLIKE the dojo system. I believe this is a manipulation tool for the educators to manipulate a child's personality and not let the child's personality progress in a natural state.... I feel educators should have to deal with children on a one on one level weather it is positive or negative behavior.... That is why they chose to be EDUCATORS NOT DICTATORS .... THIS IS A BAD APP ALL THE WAY AROUND.... In my opinion....

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Mike
11/15/2015 07:19:21 am

Hi Donald,

Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments! I tend to disagree, but I can see how Class Dojo could have negative implications as well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this and I hope you had a good weekend!

Mike

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tauseef ahmed lone link
12/15/2015 08:51:15 pm

if two siblings are in two different classes:
how is the class story reflected to the parent for both kids.

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Mike
12/16/2015 05:37:01 am

Great question! I believe you either have the feed from both classes, or you're able to select which child you're viewing. I'll double check with the Class Dojo folks and let you know if either of those aren't correct. Thanks for reading!

Mike

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Uni guy
6/27/2016 10:54:45 pm

Hi Mike,

I'm curious how this would apply to higher ed. The only possible scenario I can think of is a tute setting of 20-30 students, maybe this will be useful to reward if they're being participatory, but it feels childish/gimmicky to give such labels/rewards to adolescents.

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Mike
6/28/2016 06:30:24 am

Hi Uni,

I think it depends on your class/teaching style/students. We use it with our preservice teachers all the time, and they love it. So, I think it would just depend on your teaching style, but yeah, it could definitely be a fun way to reward students for being participatory in class, which can definitely be a challenge in higher ed as well. I think a smaller class setting would be the best though, it would be harder to manage with more than 30 students or so. Hope that helps and thanks for reading,

Mike

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Zylan Davis link
3/29/2022 12:41:32 am

Thank

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