It's in the Way that You use It: ClassDojo

Eric Clapton's song, "It's in the way that you use it" always makes me think of technology use. Although I am sure it wasn't written with that intent, creative interpretation here, I guess. Yet, when I thought of ClassDojo I only saw the negative ways it was shared in classroom and I viewed it as an excuse to not build relationships, to assign points, openly share the "winners and losers" in the classroom.  Which is not the way I work or want my classroom to work.  But I never allowed myself to imagine it being used in other ways.  My teaching partner, Sherly Chavarria, asked me my opinion in which I shared similar to what you read above.  But she had already started to see the tool in a new and different way.  She agreed that she didn't want to use it as a public board of behavior, but valued other areas of the tool and highlighted some of those to me.

I'll admit I was reluctant, but I trust Sherly's judgement and I gave ClassDojo a second look.  What I found is ClassDojo is a system like any other, it can be used for good or for evil, its in the way that you use it.  Jennie Magiera and I have often shared with others how tools considered evil can be used for good ranging from social media to Jennie's instructional videos.  What it comes down to is people see a tool as one thing, but it can be re-imagined into a variety of tools and uses.  I can now see ways ClassDojo can work for me.

Here are some aspects I am excited about:

• Data: The system shows me by class, by student and offers daily or a variety of over time looks at student positive and negative points.  I can see the value of this with students, parents and administrators in conversation as well as data for Special Education services around behaviors.
• Access: Students and parents can log in and see a private view of student information.
  
• Download reports: Download any of the individual or class reports and now they can be shared easily through email.
• Add and delete indicators: I wanted a way to track "behaviors" but also wanted to personalize the items for transitions in hallways, homework completion and other school specific things like our schools Eagle Coins to recognize students.  All easy to add.  If there were indicators I disagree with or don't want they were just as easy to delete.
• Import feature: I see two classrooms of students, I can easily import all my new indicators across classes, great for teachers wanting the same standard but assigned to multiple class lists of students. 
• Mobile: ClassDojo can now be used on a mobile device and you do not need an internet connection to use it.

As always nothing is perfect! As I start to use it this list my grow, but now there is one feature I would love to see added to the ClassDojo features.

What I would ask to be added:

• Multiple Teacher Access: I share my classroom with Special Education co-teachers, I have student teachers in the past, having access for all teachers to one class would be amazing.

Like any tool, its all in the way that you use it. 

Developing Student Activists

It's been a while since I last blogged! The end of the year is always a busy time and exciting time at my school. We embark on a unit of study that has a social justice slant and immerse our students in the topic. This year we decided to focus on nonviolent solutions to the problems in our school, community and city. My students first learned about the violence neighborhood by neighborhood. They then studied the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King JR. and Mahatma Gahndi to find ways to share solutions to violence through nonviolent means. They also learned about nonviolent approaches used in the past and bullying from our good friends at Burley School on our shared blog space soschicago2013.blogspot.com.

After all the learning it was time for some action. Our students decided to create posters using the app, Phoster. They also created slides on keynote about the neighborhood data they studied.

They also created a music video. As you can see below each student offered their personal solution to the violence issues facing our city. In the end we all want to be a part of solving the violence that plagues our city. I am incredibly proud of their work, their message and their commitment to find solutions. This is the final work I will share from my students this year and in my opinion it is their most powerful.

SOS Chicago from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

Share Student Digital Work

Whenever I discuss technology and science instruction I always want to share my students' amazing work and let their voices be heard. Even if I wanted to take my students and ipads out with me this is often not possible. One of the best ways to share with people is to have work available online, but that limits the sharing to only the work.

In my recent trip to Atlanta to present with Jennie Magiera and Anita Huffman I wanted to bring my students into the room. I thought about how to share the students work and also have it feel as if they were presenting the work. I took pictures of students and used the Snapseed app to adjust the pictures. I then had students do a quick voice recording on croak.it to introduce themselves and also the work. The next step was to link both the work and the voice recording to QR codes. I printed the pictures and attached the QR codes.

A great way to share students and their work with a larger audience!

Science Content through iMovie Trailers

I shared a few of these in my last presentation.  Again thanks to Craig Dwyer for having his trailer planning sheets on the web and shares widely.  I let my students decide what they wanted to "teach" to others, join a like-minded team and get to work.  One idea that I would do differently is talk through with kids about "examples" a bit more.  Many of my students just searched for pictures of the content: water cycle, pulley, etc instead of looking to break down the ideas to explain them better.  Here are two of the star iMovie trailers.

Enjoy

Food Chain

The Food Chain from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

Levers

Levers from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

PLAY and PLN

After an inspiring PLAYDATE13 teacher created conference in February, the teachers at my school have been continuing the learning in a similar exploration setting. We have committed to a once a month mini-PLAYDATE in which we pick one technology tool to explore together. We started with Twitter and we have established "Twitter Tuesday" with teachers and students tweeting, this month we moved onto book creation.

The group gathered and explore two big ideas in book creation: teacher creation for students and student book creation. We used Meg Wilson's book creation reccommendations to start. All of the paid app book creators were very generous to give codes so our teachers could test out the apps in our session. Teachers spent time working in pairs or groups to explore how these apps and see how they could best be utilized in our classrooms. Here are the results from our exploration. The big winners were Book Creator and Story Creator.



Having a group of teachers learn together has been a refreshing change from our usual staff meetings. The mini-PLAYDATE has a book club feel with a technology slant. It is teacher driven and teacher inspired. We already know that next month we will be looking at movie making. Have you thought about asking teachers to learn together in your school? We would be happy to Google Hangout with other likeminded teachers if you are up for it. Will we see you in April?

QR Code Content Review

I create anchor charts for each big science concept as the students are learning in the unit. I have posters with key ideas about all the work we have done this year, as students get ready for state testing I wanted a fun way to review the posters, have students aware of the location in the room and how to use the posters to get information during class and during the test.

I developed a basic question for each poster for the students to "find" the poster to scan. The students worked with a partner to then scan the code for a follow up question they could answer using the poster as a reference. I then used qrstuff.com to create text clues for the posters once students found the correct poster from their sheet. The students wrote the answer to the QR clue on their scavenger hunt sheet. The scavenger hunt allowed students to do some hunting and then do some thinking in a game like setting. Students also had the ipad's accessibility features on the questions generated by the QR code to support reading of questions.

CPS Tech Talk Prezi Resources

Honored to be presenting at Chicago Public Schools Tech Talk 2013. Here are the links from my presentation.

Mental Note Multimedia Science Journals

Educreations iPad App

Educreations student work

MyCreate Stop Motion App and Resources

Overview of Movie Making in Intermediate Science

iMovie Trailer Planning Sheets from Craig Dwyer

Student Movies and iMovie Trailers

QR Code Creator

Intermediate Science Kidblog

Quadblog with four global classrooms

NTA Students Twitter

Autumn's Science Classroom App List:
Audioboo
BrainPOP
Easy Chart
LeafSnap
iCell
Keynote
Mental Note
NASA Viz
Migration HD
Spacecraft 3D
WWF Together
Xperica HD
iQwiki
iMovie
Keynote
Popplet Lite
Kabaam
Toontastic
WWF Together



Please find other information on other ways I am utilizing technology in my classroom on my blog or on twitter @mslaidler!

CPS Tech Talk Prezi: