Class Dogo?

[iHaveACold]

Our school is introducing this soon. If you use it in your class, what do you think?

I'm dreading the messages from the parents already!

Nightmare, IME

We have been using it since lock down started. I really like it but you do get messages at all times of the day, night and weekend! I have had five messages tonight. I could ignore them and just answer the following day but it's easier to just reply there and then otherwise you end up with loads.

We use it in class for rewards and the children love it, but parents have no visibility. What are you expected to use it for?

I LOVE class dojo! We now use it for all our homework, the messages aren't an issue as we have very set hours to reply. The parents have been great and it's opened up great channels of communication 😊

We've just started using it. I flit between loving it and hating it. Kids really want points, but this means they're behaving only for the sake of points and not actually learning to motivate themselves at all. Parents inadvertently make it worse by promising them rewards when they get to X points.

Messaging parents is much easier than phoning (no phones without going into someone else's office, cleaning it many times in so doing!) and so far, but some parents have sent ridiculous messages.

Facility for putting homework on there is great and the kids were keen, but no good for those only accessing on a phone or with no suitable device.

We had it purely for dojo points pre Covid (& no parental access) which was fine but it has really come in to its own over lockdown & since.

It was our main communication tool during lockdown with children uploading work to their portfolios then we could feed back & that worked really well.

Now we use it for homework and parents can contact us through messages/we can contact them - really useful esp atm where it’s not so easy to have those little chats about stuff. (I’m in a school with a very open door policy, usually parents can come in to classroom even to y6.) However we have great parents and they are really respectful of boundaries, when to contact us etc.

Class story lets us share snippets from the classroom, photos or short videos of work etc to keep parents in touch with what’s going on. They really value that.

It’s useful that it can be accessed in lots of different ways (web, phone app etc) so nearly all our families (& we are not in a wealthy area, have high pp etc) were able to use it.

Overall I’m very positive about it.

I do have notifications turned off on my phone for it so only see messages when I check it. That’s a good sanity saver :)

Think it’s pretty awful. Treats children like pets. Rewards, although always well intentioned, have been shown to reduce internal motivation.

My DDs school has it. I don’t use it or log in. She doesn’t seem bothered by points or anything so no idea if they use it for that.

I don't like it, you should be moving kids to intrinsic motivation in any case.
The main reason i don't like it is that it's very visible to parents, they get weekly updates for example, and they want to know why their darling hasn't got one single hp that week etc etc 😳 which is exhausting. It can create a lot more crap that it's worth.
Kids like it for a bit then completely over it. There's better ways to manage behaviour I think.

These comments are interesting because really it totally depends what it’s being used for.

The whole point thing is one side but I don’t give my class points at all - it’s used as a communication tool & for children working remotely to share work & receive feedback. I like it a lot for that.

My DS is in a PRU and they use it but don't use the points.
We get notifications through the day which is annoying so I turn it off and check after school.
It was really good for sending home learning during lockdown as anyone on duty could comment - no waiting for DS and a busy class teacher didn't have to comment on all the photos as it wasn't direct to her email.

Oh yes and we like the class photos - DS is primary and it's hard to know what he's done at school!