Class Dojo

A piece of technology that I found would be beneficial to the teachers is an application call Class Dojo. Attending a teacher panel provided by the School of Education I noticed that two out of the four teachers are using Class Dojo in the classroom right now and they had many good example on why it is beneficial for everyone when teaching. One of the teachers had stated that her behavior system in the beginning of the year was not working and that is when she found class Dojo and how much it has helped her classroom behavior in the past 3 months. This is an application that is free in the iTunes and android store and can be beneficial for the teachers, students, as well as the parents.  Class Dojo  can be accessed on the computer as well as an Ipad, phone, or tablet as long as you have a log in you can give positive and negative feedback during your class time as a teacher. This also allows the parent to see how their child is acting in the class. Once logging into class dojo the teacher can print out an access code that can be given to the parents and child to see their process during the year.

Some of the features of the app include, giving positive and negative remarks such as bringing in homework, preparedness, also Class Dojo gives negative behavior such as not having materials, or that the students show signs of bullying, or off task. This allows the teacher to have the application open on her desk and when something either positive or negative happens she can click on each student individually or together and see how the class goes for the time allotted with what would happen negatively or positively. There is also an undo bottom, or award multiple students that will give them a working hard star, or click on all students for being disrespectful or not doing their homework with a running total. All of these aspects of the app allow the teacher to go back and see how the class is doing from the past week or since the beginning of the year, the parents can also see how positive or negative the class is behaving during the school day.

Other features include personalization of the student Dojo, attendance, time keeper/timer, also progression through the year. Once the teacher gives the students the log in they can see all the negative and positive points that they are getting in the class which can be competitive and make the students work harder and watch how much they can grow and participate in the classroom. Once the teacher gets going the class dojo this can help the teacher stay on task and know where the problem areas after a period of time.

This can also be a way for the teachers to have communication with the parents by either sending them a direct email or putting down a concern for their child. If the teacher puts in a concern the parent is emailed or notified by the application and that will allow the parent and teachers to say connected and always know what is going on in the classroom with their child and the percentage of growth or behavior tracking system.

I would use this in my future classroom as a beginning resource to see how it would work with the class that I would be currently working with. Being a new teacher I know it would be a good idea to let me the parents in on what I am doing with their children and know how they are progressing in my class. Also showing my students that technology will be incorporated into the class can hopefully give them a better understanding on how to use it and hopefully appropriate way to use it in the school.

Out there in the technology world there are going to be people who dislike technology, and would like it not to be in the classroom. I feel differently and think incorporating it into the schools would benefit in ways that has not been done before. This application can not only help out all the teachers and their behavioral systems, but also let the parents as well know what’s going on in the classroom on a day-to-day bias. This is defiantly an application that will help me in my future classroom, as well as other applications that will not only benefit myself but all my students as well.

References

Bishop, Alesha. "A Parent's Review of ClassDojo." Getting Smart A Parents Review of ClassDojo Comments. Getting Smart, 22 Aug. 2014. Web. 30 Jan. 2016.

"Learn All about ClassDojo." ClassDojo. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2016.

Grodex, Thomas. "Class Dojo Set Up and Tutorial." YouTube. YouTube, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2016.

Social Media In Education

There are cases where social media is being used appropriately in classrooms.All these social media sites are being seen as negative ways to teach the students in the classroom, yet many do not know that it can actually be beneficial to the students and to the teachers. Using creative approaches from the teachers are helping the students can learn from connecting, sharing, and collaborating with other students. Bloom's Taxonomy was mentioned in the article to show that the social media is helping those students with the cognitive domain, the critical thinking objectives included knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evolution.

Using social media in the classroom with the WEB 2.0 it is all about creating and publishing our own work for others to see, and that is what the teachers are doing now to help out their students not only in the classroom, but online as well. If the social media is used correctly there should be no reason why it would cause a negative perpective. Students on their off time are usually on some piece of technology, which in fact could be beneficial if that teacher decides to take a different approach and incorporate social media in his/her classroom. Two key factors when using technology are problem solving and encouraging independence when using social media. This is not bad letting the students use social media to help with homework, as long as answers will not be posted, and copying will not occur.The student will get to learn how everything works, and that will even come at a price of exploring that website and making mistakes to get it right. This is a way to expand the minds of the students for their good. Using technology and social media in the schools should be looked at as a positive and a way that is going to further the education of the children because the world is forever changing and the newer generations needs to keep up with the world.

Twitter is a big discussion point when it comes to social media and if it acceptable in the classrooms. In this article it is for teachers to use twitter in 50 different ways so that it can be beneficial to the students. With the students going on their social media sites every few seconds the new feeds would be beneficial to high school students so if there is a test tomorrow the teacher can tweet or post on Facebook that there is a test tomorrow and maybe add a pic of a study guide or a "quizzlet" that the student can take while they are looking at what happened on social media while they ate dinner, or just got back from practice. This would be beneficial to those students in the secondary range, because the little kids in the elementary range are not going to be whipping out their iPhones to check what happened on social media when they got back from from Kindergarden.

References 

Promo teto perform. (2015). Retrieved September 6 2015 

http://promotetoperform.com/top-tips-on-how-to-make-the-most-of-twitter/

The false promise of classroom technology .(2013). Retrieved September 9 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-11-11/the-false-promise-of-classroom-technology

Social media marketing .(2014). Retrieved September 7 2015

http://ryonswebdesign.com/services/social-media-marketing-smm/