Class Dojo - a behaviour management tool for the digital child and teacher.

In term three last year I blogged about behaviour management and how I was coming to terms with learning how to speak the language of the virtues.  The Year 4 class I had come into in term three had had a far bit of upheaval in the second term despite the best efforts of my predecessors and senior management to maintain stability, and as a result the class was not the cohesive unit you'd expect half way through the year and behaviour was erratic.

While I made progress using the virtues and building relationships, the behaviour management rewards side was not capturing the whole class.  I had been giving out "Caught Being Good" cards (we called them Tuis - after the NZ Music Awards - to fit in with the class theme), but some kids had lost interest, and others were stealing them from their classmates.  It became a massive effort to collect in the cards and issue the points and add them up.

Before the end of term three I was very despondent with how things were going and I was not enjoying the class, a personal disappointment to me as a professional teacher.

Something had to change.

I had heard of Class Dojo.  I'd seen it talked about at Educamps and Eduignites and ULearn14.  I had been involved in Twitter Chats and Facebook discussions on its merits.

I went to the Eduignite at Hautapu in term three and caught up with @ariaporo22, aka Alex, a high school teacher from Rotorua who is the Class Dojo Community Leader for New Zealand.  We sat down and discussed the merits.  Alex uses it for most of her classes.  She uses it to reinforce the positives and rarely, if ever, used the negative side of Class Dojo.

I also talked to Maria, the teacher in the class next door, who was also using Class Dojo, to get her perspective on it.  And then there were discussions with senior management on the way forward and how we could change the culture of the class and emphasise positive behaviour.

Three weeks before the end of term three I decided to revamp the behaviour management programme for term four and bring Class Dojo in to the mix to up the ante.

At ULearn15 Alex talked me through the set up and how it works over the cocktail event on the first night as we tried some MLE furniture out of size.  We set up an account and a "practise class" on my phone and practised giving and taking points and making new rewards to give out.  We also practised changing the monsters for each student.



The practise run - this was part of Alex's mini tutorial at ULearn15 with me.

Later on, I set up the real account for my class and it was very easy to do so after Alex's mini tutorial.

On the first day of school I sat the kids down and I really wanted to show them the new programme on the ActivBoard.... but in the holidays the school server died and my laptop and the new server were not talking.  So using my phone I showed them the Class Dojo video for the class and talked them through it.

I think the monsters hooked the kids.  They liked the bright colours, the multiple eyes and the horns.

  

I also focused on the virtues that we needed to use in the class to develop the virtue of Unity - friendliness, patience, responsibility, respect, self-discipline, consideration.  Many of these virtues the children could tell you what they looked like but many students were struggling to demonstrate them in how they behaved.

An example of some of the positive behaviours you can edit.

As Alex suggested I tried to keep the positive side of the tool the focus.  I loaded up the rewards with references to the virtues we really needed to use in the class.  And then I went made on the clicking.

I'm not going to tell you that it solved all my classroom management issues with this class, but the term was a lot better than the previous term.  Those kids who really wanted to learn and were shining examples of how to behave in the class were recognised for their efforts in a very visual way.  They soon led the points tally.  My students who were not shining lights trialled behind. 

That's when I brought in an incentive.  A sticker chart. 

I needed something that was visible when the Class Dojo was not shining on the ActivBoard.  So every time a child got another 50 points, they got a sticker.  After every 150 points they got 15 minutes golden time.  They could use the golden time to use the i-Pads, the computer, play with the class Lego or other equipment, read, or even go outside and kick a ball around.

When the class got to 1000 points (we did this most weeks), we negotiated a game to play outside.

This got my students who were not shining lights moving.  They wanted the golden time.  They wanted the outside game.  You have to love bribery.

The kids often wanted to change their monsters.  I had to limit this to once a week per child and after school, because it could be time consuming. 

Class Dojo has provision for you to link in the families so they can see from home how it is going.  It can also be used to communicate with parents  But as this was my first time and the school had no precedence in doing this, I decided against it.  If I had been in a school with established relationships with parents I may have considered this.  However, some parents had heard about it from their children and came in after school to check progress as their child changed their monster.  When we had Student Led Conferences, some parents commented that their child had made their own accounts at home and ran their own Class Dojo system!

I also kept giving out the Virtues Cards.  Class Dojo sometimes helped me with this because I could go back and check points I had given for a certain behaviour.  I probably gave out more Virtue Cards than before.

These are some of the highlights of using Class Dojo and some things I learned from a term using it:

• You can change the value of the points awarded.  I kept it at 1 point for everything, but if there is a behaviour you really want to push, you can change the value to a higher point reward and that may be a way to get that behaviour occurring more.
• I could use it at my computer or from my phone.  That meant I could be taking a reading group on the mat, and when I see Bob at the back of the room working hard, rather than ticking his name on the board or going to my laptop to click a Dojo point, I could do it from my phone on the floor.  It also meant that at assemblies or whole school singing or Kapa Haka, I could give out points for participation or respect or whatever from my phone.
• When relievers came in (who were usually inhouse relievers at this school), I could open Class Dojo on their laptops and they could dish out the points to the kids too, ensuring the class behaviour management was consistent.  It also meant I could see that some kids were behaving at least every time my laptop or phone dinged!
• I would use the Random button at the end of the day to let kids go and give them a point for a behaviour.  This was a great time for me to be able to end the day by saying something positive to each child.
• During the time we were doing Athletic sports rotations and I didn't have my class, I used the Random button to make the students accountable for their behaviour with other teachers.  If a student's name came up, I would asked their peers if they deserved a point and what behaviour they should get it for.  Some students would be honest and declare they did not deserved a point as a result.  If they did this, I would thank that student for their honesty.
• I also used Random to give out special prizes.  When we had the Tuis I would do a Tui Draw and the students pulled out of the kete would be able to choose from the choosing box (pencils, highlighters, erasers, mini notebooks, rulers, colouring pencils...).  I was able to still do this by clicking on Random.
• You can use Class Dojo to remind you who is not there!  When we did the roll each morning, we would also do the roll on Class Dojo and the students not there would fade grey so you didn't reward them points.  If a child arrives late, you go into attendance and click their name and they come back bold again.  Each child also gets a point for being at school on time.  You can also label students late if they come in as you are doing the roll.
• You can award a group of selected kids or individuals or the whole class at once.
• You can create groups.  I made groups for my reading and maths groups.  If I felt a session went well it meant I could click on the Short Tailed Bats maths group or the Takahe reading group and the children in that group received points.  Any absent child would not receive points.
• There are a whole pile of resources, like certificates and more, that you can access to enhance the experience.  I have yet to use these.
  
• You can check out the statistics for behaviour as a whole class, group or individual.
  
• If you have instigated the facility for parent participation, you can post notices, photos and videos for parents to view.  It's called Class Story.
• There is now a goal feature - that was developed after I made my sticker chart.  Ironic.
• Class Dojo sends you messages to tell you about developments through the app.

These are some of the things I would like to see Class Dojo do to enhance the tool for teachers and students, if possible:

• Make it so the students can create their own monster - colour, number of eyes, visible teeth, horns....  I suspect it is already available - but the kids have to have their own log ins to do it.
• When you click on a child or a selection of children, make it so you can click more than one behaviour or the same behaviour multiple times to reward a child.
• Allow the teacher to choose different sounds to go with a behaviour so the children can identify the reward by the sound as well.
• Have a greater variety of icons for the behaviours.  I had icons doubling up, which was tricky visibly.

On the whole, I found this tool helped my class become a calmer group during term four that had better behaviour to enable more learning.  I was able to reward those students who often slip under the radar because you can become too focused on the children with undesirable behaviour.  It forced me (gladly) to look for the positives in a group that I was losing hope in.  Class Dojo enabled us as a class to focus on what was good in our class.

It is easy to set up (plenty of YouTube tutorials if you need them), the app can be used across a variety of platforms and the administrators are regularly coming up with new features.  The use of it in the classroom can be as easy or laborious as you want.

Twitter as a Personal Learning Network for Teachers

I joined Twitter at the end of ULearn11, the same day as I started this blog.  It was a huge leap, but after three days of attending keynotes and breakouts and hearing about how other educators were using various websites, blogging and Twitter in their classrooms and their own personal learning I thought I'd make the leap.

You can see my first blog ULearn11 - learning, discovering, trying it out for myself to see the beginning of my blogging journey nearly three years ago.

I started off in Twitter very slow.  It was fits and bursts, slowly finding people to follow.  Going to Educamp in early November 2011 helped.  It gave me the opportunity to see how even though we were in the same room we could communicate not only verbally but virtually and with people elsewhere in the country who could not be there, therefore widening the discussion and learning possibilities.

The Rugby World Cup and the elections in 2011 were other opportunities to have a blat on Twitter too.

But that first year, through till ULearn 2012, I felt more of a voyeur than a participant.  At ULearn 2012 I began to use Twitter much more.  During breakouts I would have my laptop with me and this made it easy for me to write my notes directly into my blog, go straight to the websites discussed and so on.  But in the keynotes I struggled with my laptop on my knee in a confined space and was often running short on battery.  I had recently purchased a cheap and nasty tablet, so I started tweeting on that to take notes of the keynote.  That worked a treat.  It meant later that I was able to go back to my tweets (and those of others I had retweeted) to reflect on what was said and blog it as part of my reflections.

Sometime in early 2013 I discovered #edchatNZ on every second Thursday night, and I started getting involved in Twitter chats.  This is a great chat because it encompasses teachers and non-teachers from all education sectors and really gets some great debate going on a variety of teaching, learning, professional and educationally political matters.

I've also fallen into other chats at various points, but this one I Storified below I accidentally started one Thursday night that wasn't an #edchatNZ night but got people talking:  Sadly Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media landscape and none of my Storifies exist anymore.  😭😭😭😭

The key phrase that has emerged in the last few years has been PLN or Personal Learning Network.  As teachers we are developing these networks, communicating with a range of teachers we may otherwise not have encountered. 

We talk on Twitter, and sometimes Facebook through various networks, and sometimes we meet face to face at Educamps, Eduignite, ULearn, ConnectED, or at some other form of professional development.  Sometimes we meet up because we've actually developed friendships.

And #edchatNZ is actually hosting its first face to face unconference in August.  Check out this poster and go to the BlogSpot for more info or just ask on Twitter using #edchatNZ to find out more:

I talk to a range of primary, intermediate and secondary teachers as well as facilitators on Twitter, principals too, and sometimes BOT members of various schools.  I am unsure how many ECE teachers are engaged, but it would be great to get more involved.

But I also communicate with politicians, sports people, media, comedians, musicians, actors and many other amazingly funny, creative, thought provoking, interesting Twerps and Tweachers.  I may have started off slow, but I am now over 11,000 tweets into this journey and it is amazing.

Kevin Honeycutt (@kevinhoneycutt) said at ULearn12 that Twitter has your back.  I can say that you can put something out to your PLN and they will respond and an amazing conversation will be thrown back to you.  This happened to me in March, accidentally again, when I posted The Classroom Environment - what makes a class attractive?  What followed when I posted that blog up was four hours on a Friday night of people sharing great artwork and project ideas from their classroom walls!!

I saved so many of those pictures for inspiration later on. 

And that is the great thing about a PLN is that they inspire, advise, invigorate, spark new thinking, refocus, give a different point of view - and I can do it from the comfort of my bed in my pjs for free!!!

Educamp Rotovegas 22 February 2014

On Saturday 22 February I attended Educamp Rotovegas at Mokoia Intermediate in Rotorua.

If you haven't been to an Educamp before, this is what they are all about:

A bunch of teachers converge on a school on a Saturday, at no cost to anyone, and they share their knowledge.  It is based on the unconference format - this means that it is not based on a rigid format and timetable where you have to be in a certain workshop at a certain time.  We start the day with a smackdown, which means anyone who wants to make a two minute presentation about something that excites them, adds it to a Google Doc and speaks to it.  This is the link to the Google Doc.  We also put some post-its on the wall with things we are able to share and things we want to know about on it.  As a result of these post-its, we break into groups during the afternoon to discuss specific topics.

Coders are today's rockstars  -  @mrs_hyde (I'm using Twitter handles here to say who was presenting) spoke about coding being an important skill to introduce to our learners.  Coding teachesWhat most schools don't teach is a video with a lot of those people who have been involved in founding and developing those icon ICT companies, such as Microsoft and Twitter and the like, talking about what coding will help learners with.  One that I can recommend you start with is Scratch, based on the Logo program we tinkered as kids with back in the 80s.  It's been redesigned with avatars and an exciting new "lego" building code.  You link the coding blocks together like "lego" to build games and stories or whatever.
learners about thinking. 

Kidsedchatnz  -  @Juliet_Revell spoke about Kidsedchatnz.  This happens at 2 o'clock each Thursday afternoon on Twitter.  Participating children/classes will need a Twitter account.  The topics are predetermined by a group of teachers at the beginning of each term so that the children can come somewhat prepared.  The list of topics can be found at the Kidsedchatnz blog.  To participate, contact @PalmyTeacher to register your class.

Tweetdeck  -  @mrs_hyde loves Twitter.  She calls it the best PLD, her online staffroom.  And I have to agree.  I've met so many amazing teachers through Twitter (and consequently Educamps) and been exposed to so many ideas for the classroom and ICT than I would have been by any other means.  But Twitter is a fast moving tool.  So @Mrs_Hyde introduced us to Tweetdeck is a tool so that can be personalised so you can see all the streams of your different interests, e.g. you can have one stream showing tweets automatically updating, another with notifications, another with a particular interest you have such as teachers from New Zealand.  I've been using it since when I'm on my computer and it makes things so much easier to follow when you get notifications.

TeachMeetNZ  - presented by @1MvdS for @vanschaijik (who is the person to contact for help on this), TeachMeetNZ is a virtual presentation place for teachers to share what is happening in their classroom.  It's presented as a nano slide presentation of a total of three minutes (or 15 seconds per slide).  The next presentations will be screened on Saturday 22 March during the Festival of Education.  @

#edchatNZ  -  @MissDtheteacher spoke to this topic.  #edchatNZ was developed so other Kiwi teachers (or interested parties) could find your NZ education related chat; so NZ educators can share their educational knowledge.  Once a fortnight on Thursday night we have a topic and a big discussion on Twitter.  Every comment during the discussion needs to have the #edchatNZ hash tag attached to stay visible in the feed and to allow others who couldn't/didn't participate an opportunity to dip in.  It is a great way to share, discuss, collaborate, innovate, debate.... I know because I have participated.

Blogs in specialist classes  - presented by @mrs_hyde, who this year has become a food technology teacher.  She has decided to use a blog to provide support to students, get feedback from students, support other teachers and present information about the specialist subject.

Snapchat - presented by @mrs_hyde, she talked about how great this app on your smart phone is for connecting with the young ones who will no longer communicate with you by text message, tweeting, Facebook or email - so ideal for parents.  Pictures and videos only last 10 seconds and can only be sent to people with the Snapchat app.  This does have issues as a result, mainly the potential for this app to be used as a tool to cyber bully.  Consequently it is important to push being a good cyber citizen.

EdShelf  -  presented by @AnneSturgess, Edshelf is a discovery engine of websites, mobile apps, desktop programs, and electronic products for teaching and learning.  It can be used to collate a collection of apps you use for a particular purpose.  So you can end up with a board of the apps for inquiry learning for example.  You can also print out QR codes.

Minecraft - presented by @mrs_hyde and @kasseylee11, who set up a Minecraft server at their school, it has improved student engagement, and has created literacy and numeracy learning opportunities - one class created an entire city described in a book and made movies to bring to life the end of the book.  Later in the day we had a Minecraft workshop and @kasseylee11 showed us the resources she had gotten off a website called Teachers Pay Teachers with Minecraft ideas for teachers and challenges for students.  It was my first attempt at Minecraft and I was rather pathetic.  All I achieved was digging holes, destroying trees and killing pigs!!

Explain Everything - presented by @steve_katene, Explain Everything is a unique interactive whiteboard and screencasting tool  used by over 900.000 students and educators. 

Gamification - presented by @BeLchick1, from the perspective of a mother as well as a teacher, what does gamification do for student engagement?

Google Docs - presented by @mrehu, he talked about how Google Docs are great for collaboration.  He explained how his school used Google Docs like e-hui, keeping all people informed and able to contribute regardless of who you are on staff.

Apps4Inquiry - presented @jkellow, Apps4Inquiry has apps that support inquiry-based learning for students.  This page looks at Android and iPad apps which are useful in planning an inquiry.  The apps on this site are free (when last looked) unless stated otherwise. Any prices are in NZ$ and were correct when the website was set up.  Resources4Inquiry was also highlighted with all the steps of the inquiry heading up useful web tools and apps for each stage.

Daily 5 - presented by @CaroBush who is a leading light in the world of Daily 5 in New Zealand.  Just quietly, she did not teach guided reading last year as such after reading The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks), and all the children in the class went up 2 year levels, and those children below the standard met the standard.  Caro simply let the kids read what they wanted.  This is a link to Caro's Prezi about Daily 5.

Storify - presented by @mrs_hyde, Storify can gather all the goodness and notes from Twitter about a topic/conference/meeting and storify it.  It is free to use and can be embedded into a blog.  Below is my first attempt at Storifying!!



Quadblogging Aotearoa - presented by @barbs1, she talked about how lots of classes have blogs, but struggle to find an audience.  There is an international group of Quadbloggers, but schools in New Quadblogging Aotearoa organisation for our own school terms.  And some teachers got together and set it up under the Virtual Learning Network umbrella.  Any class can join and the team will group together four classes to communicate and blog with each other.
Zealand really needed their own

VLN - The Virtual Learning Network is one stop help desk, by NZ teachrs for NZ teachrs, to find help and ask questions and discuss.  It is an interactive resource provided by the Ministry of Education for all New Zealand educators.

Snapguide -  presented by @leighhynes, Snapguide makes a set of instructions using text, photos and videos to embed in your blog, wiki or other learning management systems.  It gives a set of instructions to students to do something.  There are five slides in a Snapguide.  You can add text, photos and videos.  It is best for giving simple instructions and can be created from any device.  Here is a Snapguidefor making a Snapguide!!

 
 
Bookmarking - presented by @leighhynes, Leigh explained how she organises her bookmarking in Google Drive.  She invited people to make a copy (not to alter her original) and create their own. ' Go to Leigh's Google Drive to see it in action.

3-D Printing - @onemouse brought along his 3-D printer and demonstrated this amazing machine during the afternoon.  I have to say I was originally sceptical about 3-D printing, especially after Maurice Williamson's hysterical rantings about printing plastic guns that will get through airport security.  I also really had no idea about how this technology really worked.  I had visualised ink on paper.  But as you can see from the photos I took below, it doesn't involve paper at all.  This baby was printing using plastic!!!

 

Hemmingway App - presented by @onemouse, Hemmingway App is an app that helps a writer improve their writing by highlighting sections of the text that may need reworking.

 @gigakidsnz  -  Brian Jennings in Napier has created @gigakidsnz, an learning resource for Y3-8 for anyone in NZ.  Great if you have got Dashboard so each kid can have their own email address, they have their own avatar, and it is like a game, and you can print out with a 3D printer.  It talks about your town and what is in your town.  If you can fit it into a context to make it work for you.

 

IUgo  -  presented by myself (@melulater) and @pennstaro, iUgo comes from Essential Resources and is an online planning tool with absolutely everything from the New Zealand Curriculum.  It does long term plans, unit plans, weekly plans and daily plans and you can link them all to each other.  You can get a month free to evaluate it, then the twelve month subscription kicks in.  You can join as an individual and be the only one to have access unless you give someone else your password, or your team or school can join and have shared access to each other's planning. 
Google Summit - @allanahk talked about the upcoming Google Summit towards the end of April at Albany.  The details are in the picture below and go to this link for more information.

Flick - @allanahk talked about how Flick can work on any platform and you can move a video and pictures from any device easily.  As the website says: It’s hassle free! Place photos, notes, documents and contacts onto your Flicktop and flick to any other device running the app. The built-in Flicktop provides a safe layer where files are easily transferred with a simple flick gesture. Once the file lands on your Flicktop you can then decide whether to save or delete it.




Chrome Apps - there is a Google App called Video Not.es that will allow you to play and pause and write notes about a You Tube clip and save it all in your Google Drive.  To download this app, and it has to be installed to use, click here.  Here is the blurb from the site:
Have you ever been struggling to take notes while watching videos? Not anymore!
VideoNotes, developed by UniShared (www.unishared.com), currently supports Youtube and Coursera videos and works best for the last versions of Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari.
It enables you to:
- Watch videos and take notes at the same time, on the same screen
- Keep the same shortcuts to play/pause your video while writing notes
- Automatically synchronize your notes and video. Just click on a line of your notes to jump to the related part of the video.
Everything is automatically stored in your Google Drive, to access them everywhere.

EduCampNZ Community set up in Google+ - EduCampNZ now has a community on Google+ where you can go hang out and you can get to it from this link.  There is a getting started link to be able to explore many of the wonderful ways Google+ can be used.

Edmodo  - presented by @CaroBush, Edmodo is like Facebook for kids.  The kids don't need an email account, as it is all set up by the teacher.  They can log in with an unique code and can invite their parents.  You, as the controller, can lock it.  You can decide who sees what in it. 

ConnectED and Eduignite  - ConnectED is based in Hamilton and is a large cluster of schools within Hamilton and from the wider Waikato, but now Rotorua and Taupo are beginning their own cluster.  Its goals are as follows: To foster and establish a wide community of practice further developing a culture of improving learning environments for the region's students. To facilitate ICT initiatives that create regional capacity and are aligned with the expressed needs of the community. For educators within the region to feel more connected with each other.
Eduignite comes under the Emerging Leaders NZ umbrella.  This is the blurb:
What is ignite? Ignite is an event in over 100 cities worldwide. At the events Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes.
The rules:

• Drinks and nibbles are always provided, and anyone is welcome
• Attendance at your first Ignite evening is ‘no strings attached’
• Attendance at your second Ignite Evening requires you to do one of two things: i) bring a friend, or ii) present an Ignite talk.

All EduIgnite sessions are 6:00pm for a 6:30pm start.

And that was a very full on day at Mokoia Intermediate, but I found out about a lot of new things, found out more about stuff I knew little about, filled in some missing gaps on things I knew a bit more about, and caught up with some wonderful educators from all over.  Thanks @mrs_hyde for being a great host.