Peer Review

ClassDojo App for iOS

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Reviewed:: Dec 12, 2019 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

'ClassDojo helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators. Teachers can use this app to give students realtime feedback while in class - it will sync with the main ClassDojo website. Better learning behaviors, smoother lessons, and hassle-free data - and it's free for teachers!' This is a free app!

Type of Material:

Class Communication, Activity & Assessment Tool

Recommended Uses:

Teachers can use ClassDojo to bring parents into the classroom experience by sharing photos, videos, and announcements. They can also create a "classroom story" to share the daily updates for the class.

Teachers can also safely and instantly message with any parent.

Parents see their child’s updates at home, as well as a stream of photos and videos from school.

Students can submit assignments in the app which can be assessed by their teacher, receive feedback in the app, and even create a digital portfolio of their work, all with a few clicks.

Technical Requirements:

This tool is browser based and is also available as an app for either IOS or Android. No special plug-ins are required.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

According to their website, "ClassDojo connects teachers with students and parents to build amazing classroom communities". They do this by providing students with a place to safely share activities with their teacher(s) for assessment and curation, and with their parents to build a sense of community between home and school.

Target Student Population:

The site is primarily designed for Grade School or Middle School, however the app does not distinguish between pre-school or university level for example, and can be used by anyone who is approved to create a 'class'.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Basic computer skills such as point and click but the app is easy to learn for teachers, parents & students.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: Since creating a connection between home and classroom can be a key to success for students, this app is a perfect approach to creating that connection. Not only can parents be as informed as they choose and easily communicate with their child's teacher, but students can be proud to share their work with family, plus easily create a portfolio where they can see improvement over time.
Concerns:: The quality of this website is outstanding!

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

This app has a variety of uses that all have the potential to increase student learning and can be used to kick off the start of school, communicate with parents to keep them connected to the classroom all year, collect and share student activities and assessments along the school year, and even end the year with the announcement of a potential classroom party.

The communication tools are as simple as email. So after adding parent's email to the app, the teacher can send whole class or individual announcements.

The activity and assessment tools are simple for both the teacher and the student. Once the teacher adds the students' names to the class they create in the app (a copy and paste from the roster works fine) they set up an activity including options such as photo, text, video, or drawing with a couple of clicks.

Students submit the activity by following brief instructions that often are as simple as a + icon. Now their activity is ready for assessment by the teacher who has a completion meter where they can determine which students have submitted and who is yet to be assessed. They have the following options for providing feedback individual but also for the class, all of which are editable and can be set to provide points that students can accumulate to possibly earn rewards:

Helping others
On task
Participating
Persistence
Teamwork
Working hard

Concerns:

This tool is very effective as a teaching and learning tool.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

Whether parent, student or teacher, this app supports the user with clear and accurate instructions for use by providing multiple methods of help including a step-by-step page of "how-to's" for each called 'Helpdesk' and email support.

Because the intended use is not just for busy teachers but also parents and children who may not be tech savvy, the app was obviously designed to be easy for anyone to navigate. The clear and consistent layout throughout make it easy to navigate no matter who is using the tool. For example, when a student clicks on the link to an activity, the activity is automatically downloaded to their device.

In addition to the above mentioned features, teachers can use the app to take attendance, create reports, share their ideas with other teachers, and even make use of the Toolkit which includes a timer, noise meter, music, and more.

Concerns:

ClassDojo is completely free for parents, teachers, and students!

Optional: parents may subscribe to ClassDojo’s Beyond School for extra activities designed for at-home use. Beyond School is only available on iOS devices and in certain markets.

After a 7-day free trial, the Beyond School subscription will charge $7.99 monthly (this pricing is for the US; pricing in other countries may vary).

The Beyond School subscription will automatically renew at the end of each month unless canceled at least 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can turn off auto-renew at any time from your Account Settings and your subscription will remain active until the end of the purchased period.

Other Issues and Comments:: The privacy information is provided in the Privacy Center and additional information for school principles is provided in the School Leader FAQs.
Creative Commons: