Techspired Tuesday: Using Class Dojo for Classroom and Behavior Management Tool

This will be my first post in a series of posts called "TECHspired Tuesdays." Every Tuesday I will be writing about any technology that I found on Pinterest (or somewhere else, but hey-where do most of my ideas come from? Pinterest, of course). The technology I feature will be free/easy to implement. If I come across something I had to pay for and I share, then I'll be sure to let you know. Please note I am not paid for my reviews.

Anywho...

My blog "The Pinspired Teacher" fits me so well, because as a new teacher most of my ideas and resources are found through Pinterest. I am all about classroom management and having a classroom that runs like a well-oiled machine, the website that I am about to share helps achieve that goal.

Class Dojo is a website that allows you to award and penalize students using Dojo points. You can also download a Class Dojo APP.

If you use any kind of classroom economy, Class Dojo can serve as an online bank account. This is especially good for students who lose their [insert name of your classroom economy here] such as fake dollars, sticker charts, etc.

While most of my behavior techniques come from Whole Brain Teaching, I also had to correlate my behavior plan with my team's behavior plan since we share students. The other teacher on my team holds an end of the year auction that students use their classroom money to purchase cool things. All year they earn stickers that are worth anywhere from 10-100+. I use Class Dojo as a way for them to earn points for the auction.

Top 10 Reasons I love Class Dojo:

1. It's great for the SMARTBoard. You can have the website minimized as you teach, pop it up any time you need to use it. It's an amazing visual for students to see too since you can get  clear snapshot of the whole class on one page.
2. I will never loose, misplace, spill coffee on a behavior management paper again, since all of the information is stored online. 
3. I can separate it by classes which keeps me organized since I teach three 4th grade classes.
4. The "random selector" allows me to choose a student at random and reward them a point or if it randomly lands on their name and they're having a conversation with someone I can deduct a point from them. I also use this instead of pulling Popsicle sticks with the students' name on them.
5. I can print PDF reports for my whole class and for individual student behavior. I can e-mail or send home these reports as often as I'd like. I am not organized enough to do it every week, but I do like to share it during parent teacher conferences. I also add the whole class percentage to our data wall so we can track our improvement as a class. When you look at the report, you can quickly identify what behavior a particular student earned the most negative points on. For example, I have a student who had 75% negative behavior and it was all from breaking rule #2-Raise your hand for permission to speak. That serves as a great visual for reflecting and goal setting with the student. 
6. The sound effects-I love them because the positive Dojo point has a distinct sound and so does the negative Dojo point. When my students are working independently and I see someone- or a few- getting off task, if I reward someone ON task and the class hearing the little ding sound for a positive Dojo point, everyone else in the class sits up a little straighter and tries a little harder. Especially when they aren't sure who received the point. 
7. The secret login code: Each student receives a code that allows them to access Dojo at home. Share this with parents during Open House/Parent Teacher Conferences. They will be able to see how their child is doing on a daily basis if they so choose to. I have some students on behavior contracts that requires their parents to sign and return on a daily basis, as an alternative a parent could login to Class Dojo and e-mail you with questions/concerns/comments. I'm all about options. What works for one parent, won't for work for every parent, but it is nice to have this as an option.
8. Personalized Avatars: Each student is assigned an avatar such as a colorful monster, however when they get the student code they can go online and build their monster to look however they choose. You could also take student photos and upload them next to their name. I'm thinking that'd be a very good thing for the primary grades. 
9. Newly added-a class timer! I don't know about you, but I like online timers, the only thing is when I want to give the students a timed activity they have to wait for me to pull it up, well, if you have Class Dojo already opened then you just saved yourself a few extra minutes of your precious teacher time. 
10. The students LOVE IT! I have 4th graders, and recently a teacher told me her husband uses it and he teaches middle school! 
11. I know, I know, I said Top 10 but if you've made it this far then you will want to know this: You can customize the categories for positive points and negative points. The website will give you general ones to begin with, but editing them, deleting them, and adding more are easy. I made mine line up with my rules.

Click Here for a Class Dojo Parent Letter

Watch the Student Introduction Video: