Class Dojo

Class Dojo is a classroom management tool that allows you to give behavior feedback to students in a timely and efficient manner. It is free to sign up and allows you to add as many classes as you need to. After entering students' names you are ready to project the class onto a whiteboard, smartboard, or laptop. This is what you will see:

During class you can add points for good behavior (types of behavior are easily customizable) or subtract points for less desirable behavior (also customizable). You can do this using a smartphone, tablet, or computer. At the end of class you can email reports to parents or just save the results for your own records. Class Dojo also provides a breakdown of everything that happened during the day.

Finally, you can give students their own accounts that allow them to customize their avatar and check out their points from home. Class Dojo is still adding new features and I am interested to see how it grows and evolves.

Although I'm not teaching yet this seems like a interesting and fun way to help manage classroom behavior. I am interested to hear if anyone has any opinions on how this would work with their students.

Tangents are fun! (now back to work)

Today is the last day of my "week" when it comes to my master's program. By that I mean that new assignments are posted on Wednesday and due by Tuesday. With that being said, generally speaking Tuesday is that day I go back through everything that was assigned for the week, make sure I didn't miss anything, and read through and respond to my classmates' posts. Normally...this is a pretty quick process (assuming that I did my work throughout the week). However, today has turned into me scouring the internet for the little hidden (and not so hidden) gems of educational technology, professional development, web 2.0 and more. Here are a few of my favorites (in no particular order):

• Diigo: Diigo is a website that allows you to keep track of your favorite websites through bookmarking. It also allows you to save pictures, articles, screenshots, and more and store all of this information on the cloud. The best part is that they have made it accessible from just about any platform you can think of. I already have it on my PC, iPad, and iPhone. The basic version is free. Added bonus? They have an educator version that is also free. It is verified using your school email address.

• Fotobabble: I found this website in an extremely round-about way. I started off at Livebinders, then found The Adventures of Library Girl blog, which led me to Larry Ferlazzo's blog. Larry includes links to the blogs he uses in his classrooms. One of these is for his ELL students. As I was browsing through his sites I found a really interesting and unique project he seems to use quite a bit. He has his students choose a photo related to whatever they are studying (such as a book cover for a book review), go to Fotobabble, upload the photo and record their thoughts. A link to the finished project is then posted on the class blog where everyone can check it out. I love this idea because it gets students to think, synthesize information, and create content. Although his students are older, this same project can be used for any grade level.

• Web 2.Grove: Last (for today), but not least, is a wiki that Jennifer LaGarde, the author of The Adventures of Library Girl, created for her middle school teachers to use to find and share various Web 2.0 and intstructional technology tools. I have never been a huge fan of wikis. This is probably because I have never found a use for them that I really like. I have also had to use them (in my MEd program) in ways that just didn't make sense. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this wiki and thought it was really cool. It is a great way to provide a place for teachers to access and share information. It allows anyone to update it with new materials and is a user friendly, unintimidating format to "get the word out". There are tons of links to resources that have great potential in the classroom and I highly recommend that you check them out. This is definately an inspiration and something that I would like to help create and set-up when I start teaching.