Original post by Aggie on September 29, 2018.
What is ClassDoJo?
ClassDojo is a behaviour management tool that creates a classroom community that connects parents, teachers and students in an app and website that shares photos, videos and messages. ClassDojo was created in a bottom-up approach. Co-founders Liam and Sam spent a month cold-calling teachers and asking for their input/ideas on what their biggest challenge in the classroom is. Many teachers mentioned classroom management took up the most of their time. Taking this information, Liam and Sam devised a way to help connect parents to support their children in the classroom. ClassDojo strives to stay up to date in supporting teachers and is always asking for feedback and making appropriate changes to the app and website. ClassDojo has a gamification aspect to it where students’ are able to create avatars for themselves and customize their character. ClassDojo focuses on building a classroom community and showcasing social emotional learning. Teachers are able to give points, takes photos, videos and send messages of students’ when they show positive traits such as perseverance, working hard, being creative, being on time. Parents can respond and interact with these photos, videos, messages and points to give positive reinforcement to their child and see that the teacher and parent are working together. Children are held accountable for their behaviour, as parents are notified in real time of what is happening in the classroom through ClassDojo.
Who are Liam and Sam?
Sam Chaudhary comes from an education background. Sam has a degree in economics and went on to teach high school after graduating. Sam left teaching as he wanted to have more of an impact on education and became an education-focused business analyst at McKinsey. Liam, whose mother was a teacher, comes from a computer science background. Together they researched, interviewed and worked with teachers throughout the united states to create a platform in which they could easily manage the classroom. Sam and Liam co-founded ClassDojoin 2011. Within 5 weeks, ClassDojo has 12,000 teachers signed up. Currently, ClassDojo has over 35 million users. In 2016, ClassDojo received 21 million in new venture funding and is exploring on expanding it’s impact in the classroom with it’s team of 30 employees.
Why it works.
ClassDojo focuses on growth mindset- the ability that you can grow your brain and your abilities. ClassDojo is a communication tool to meaningfully manage a classroom and show students’ the importance of character and community. As well, it provides a videos and other resources for teachers to use in their classrooms to teach these valuable character traits. Students are able to actively see in real time their progress and see value and acknowledgment of their positive character growth. Parents are also involved as they are now linked into the classroom and can continue to have conversations at home about their child’s behaviour, accomplishments as well as reminders of when they need to make better choices. ClassDojo gives and active role to both teachers, students as well as parents in the creation of a positive community that fosters social-emotional well being.
Resources:
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/sam-chaudhary#section-overview
Although I have tried Class Dojo and could not get into it at the time I do believe that the concept is an excellent idea. From reading the description of the app/program, it looks like it has really advanced since I first attempted it. This is one of the key features that a business must have, as technology moves so quickly and with education there is always something new being introduced to teachers, so if you can advance something that they are already familiar with, I believe you will have success.
I wanted to learn about the founders of ClassDojo because I, as well as many other teachers, have used it in our classrooms. I was fascinated to learn about how Sam left teaching as he wanted to have more of an impact on education and became an education-focused business analyst at McKinsey. Although I absolutely love teaching, I have a lot of ambition to make a bigger change and impact on how education is offered to students. In short, I identified with Sam’s goal and I find it respectable and honest. I appreciated how Liam’s mother was a teacher and how he and Sam worked with teachers to co-develop a tool that would actually work for teachers and students. I understand how ClassDojo focuses on a growth mind-set, but I also find my students can get very worked up over the points. It is a great tool to give a number sense to a student, but I do find it can dishearten students. It is a wonderful tool, however, and I think I could use it more effectively in the future to level out the # of points I award students.