class dojo problem solving

Engage Their Minds

Conundrums from Class Dojo

Conundrums from Class Dojo are short animated videos (less than 2 minutes) that pose ethical and philosophical questions to students. Each one has a video, a question to discuss along with an activity sheet for recording responses, and the option to share the idea with parents.

How to Access Conundrums

You can access Conundrums even if you don’t have a Class Dojo account. The series is part of their Social Emotional Learning collection, which you can find here . The Conundrums set is the largest of the ten categories by far with 27 videos. You may remember that in the past I’ve also recommended their Growth Mindset videos .

An Example of a Conundrum

One example of a Conundrum from Class Dojo is “ The Tree Conundrum .” Students are given a hypothetical situation where a tree that is located on private land has been found to provide the best-tasting fruit in the world — and it’s the only one. The family who owns the property is not interested in sharing their tree, but has offered to sell one seed from the tree for a billion dollars.

Your conundrum is to decide whether someone should pay for the seed, the government should take over the property, no action should be taken, or solve the problem a different way.

Why Use Conundrums with Students?

Students love to debate topics (think about the popularity of “Would You Rather”), and these types of discussions are always opportunities for them to see things from multiple perspectives and learn how to justify their responses. They can practice their creative problem solving skills and critical thinking while feeling safe in participating because there is not one right answer. These are also quick activities that can be done after a long test or other moments when you don’t have quite enough time to start a brand new lesson. Or, you can extend them into a longer lesson using a Socratic Smackdown .

If you like these, and your students want more, you can also try:

• The Short and Curly Podcast
• Philosophy Lessons from TedEd (many are for more suitable for middle to high school)
• Philosophy Toolkit
• Philosophy for Kids Book (I used this in my own classroom)

You can find these and more ideas in my Philosophy for Kids Wakelet .

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Published by Terri Eichholz

Terri is a curriculum and tech integration specialist, speaker, and author with a passion for engaging and empowering learners. She delivers engaging professional learning, consultations on a variety of educational needs, and professional articles for various outlets . Find out more about Terri on the About page in the site menu. View all posts by Terri Eichholz

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• Jun 28, 2022

Build Problem Solving and Critical Thinking with Class Dojo Conundrums!

Hello everyone! Welcome to Week 4 of our Summer School Blog Posts!

If you enjoy puzzles or riddles, you will certainly enjoy Class Dojo Conundrums !

I am here to share with you this learning series with activities that introduce the challenging idea that not all problems have a definitive answer. Perplexing, intriguing, and mysterious, each Class Dojo Conundrum episode will bring some fun! Engage in posing open-ended questions and listen in to how students would solve these conundrums.

See below for some titles in the Conundrums you can bring to your students!

To start the activity, students will watch a short video and discuss solutions to problems. Worksheets are available for downloading to support and organize student thinking. You can also post this to your Class Story on Class Dojo page. What a valuable way to build creativity , communication , collaboration , and critical thinking with your students!

Visit https://ideas.classdojo.com/b/conundrums to get started!

If you need any additional support with educational tools, please feel free to contact your SS EdTech TOSA.

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ClassDojo – Training Character Building at the High School Level – and Training Yourself To Teach It

Evan Wolkenstein

A student sees a classmate who is lost or confused. Without being asked, he offers assistance.

A student runs into a problem in a lab, and instead of immediately putting up her hand, she attempts to solve the problem on her own.

A student has a setback on a quiz, but rather than give up, concluding that the class is dumb and the quizzes are impossible, she comes in for extra coaching.

Imagine being able to communicate and give feedback on character traits like these, traits that we may wish students would learn – but because students are not tested on them, we often intend to build these traits in students but we are not consistent or explicit on how, when, and where these skills are addressed. We may hit our goals in this regard, but intending to teach something is a little like how I write my signature: I scribble something while I think about my name.

This works for signing checks. This is not, however, good pedagogy.

One Small But Very Big Step

While ClassDojo cannot teach these skills, it can train you to constantly be aware of them – a kind of pedagogical string around your finger. You see the badges when you open ClassDojo, and you get in the “habit of mind” to write opportunities for character development into your Class Norms, your assessments, and even your lesson plans.

For example:

Class Norm: On the first day of class, instead of only talking about your bathroom policy and your late work policy, talk about the power of independence in problem solving. Show students ClassDojo, and talk about times when a student might earn the badge: “Attempt to solve problem before asking for help.”

Lesson Planning: When you write up a lesson and prepare the worksheet, handout, or document, add a section about ways students can earn ClassDojo badges. For example, be explicit, in a lesson on reducing fractions, that some students will have trouble with the exercises. Students who are stuck can put a small flag – a checker, for example – on their desk. If you see a student with a checker, you may leave your desk to assist him or her, and earn the badge: “Assists others who need help.”

Assessment: In a complex, multi-stage project, you may write into the guidelines for the project that set-back may happen: the research may prove inconclusive. The interviewee might flake. Explicitly include a section on what proactivity means: seeing the problem before it escalates. Students who stumble but address the problem before it becomes a bigger problem can earn the badge: “Proactive in handling crises.”

ClassDojo will help you give feedback on these traits, but just as importantly, it’s a step in committing to teach them.

Please share below some of the character traits you would like to see students develop – and a situation where you might anticipate awarding a badge for that trait!

• Class Dojo Phenomenon – Does it work? »
• FOR CLINICIANS
• FOR EDUCATORS
• FOR PARENTS

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Class Dojo Phenomenon – Does it work?

Recently, the media (NBC, Today, The Wall Street Journal, NPR) has highlighted a quick and colorful way for teachers and parents to track student behavior through an online program. When we heard about it at Think:Kids we were intrigued.  For teachers and parents short on time (who isn’t?), with many expectations they need their child or student to meet (who doesn’t?) a method to get a child to successfully comply is really appealing (who wouldn’t want that?). So we checked it out.  Here is the scoop from our perspective.

It’s nothing new – it is classic behavior management – but it is packaged really well. Class Dojo can be found and signed up for anywhere you have internet, it has easy steps to follow to get it running on your computer at home and in the classroom.  Its catchy in that each child gets to design a little avatar to represent themselves. Students get points by the teacher for doing things like handing in homework helping another student, raising his hand, cleaning up his work space, keeping eyes at the front of the room.  You lose a point for things like interrupting, not following instructions, talking during class. It’s just like a classis sticker chart but online and much glossier.

Here is our big concern.  Some kids have the skills to follow this type of program and can easily add points to their onscreen Avatar thus feeling good about themselves by the end of the day.  However, there are many kids who don’t have the skills to earn the points – plenty of desire to do well amongst their peers – but if the skill isn’t there then they can’t win the points.  For example, the child who never has their homework for the night before may actually struggle with organizational challenges and until those specific skills are taught she won’t get the point next to her cute avatar.  So no matter how much she wants to get points for handing in homework she can’t do it. This then leads to other problems such as the child feeling poorly about themselves, resentful of school, and perhaps angry.

Another concern is it’s all public.  The computer screen is visible in the front of the room for all the kids to see so as the teacher enters a point or takes away a point it lights up next to the student’s avatar.  There is an option to keep it private but many teachers don’t use it that way. Teachers are relying on peer pressure to get students to behave/comply. If you had frustration tolerance issues might this be a problem for you? How humiliating if you keep losing points.  How shameful will it feel if the class needs a total of 20 points to get an extra recess and you are the kid unable to make transitions easily and you lose all the points for the class?  The only way those transitions will get better is if you are taught the skills you need to manage them – losing points just won’t get the job done.

Finally, shouldn’t kids be focused on their learning experience and less on outward motivators to make them comply?  Don’t we want our kids to do well because they care about learning or are excited to get to the next class, or are looking forward to music or can’t wait for that game at recess?  Shouldn’t those be the reasons kids behave well rather than to gain a point or lose a point?  The overall controlling micromanaging incentivizing shaming feels wrong to us.

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What is Product Deconstruct? 

As a part of my blog, I look at learning solutions, not from an educator’s lens but as an aspiring product builder. I focus on the user experience, stickiness and refrain from divulging into content and quality of the content. My goal is to learn from these learning products, understand what sticks and drops and sharpen my product sense. I hope you enjoy reading these! 

About ClassDojo

Headquartered in San Francisco, ClassDojo was founded in 2011. ClassDojo is a communication app that connects school leaders, teachers, students and parents. The app is primarily targeted towards teachers who use it to communicate student development and empower students by reinforcing positive behavior. The app provides teachers with tools for positive reinforcement and a toolkit with content for students to build a growth mindset, build empathy and so on. In 2020, ClassDojo had 51 million students on the platform. ClassDojo is free for all users and has grown organically in the last 10 years. 

What’s unique? 

Through my research, it was evident that the ClassDojo team focused on solving a pressing problem in education: improve student behavior and keep parents and school leaders connected in this process. Their core values and actions revolved around solving this problem. Since 2011, the app has been free for all users. For over 8 years, the company focused on building a solution that all stakeholders in the education ecosystem needed. Their first monetization attempt was in 2019 after thorough analysis of what parents need to help kids develop life skills beyond school. ClassDojo stands out as a company that focuses on the problem, testing the solution and sharpening their understanding of the market. 

Let’s deconstruct the ClassDojo solution:

• Value Proposition 

ClassDojo is a solution for multiple stakeholders – students, teachers, parents and school leaders. Each of these user segments has different needs and problems to be solved for. Let’s take a look at the launch screen:

As a user, the moment I launch the app, I know that it’s for the entire classroom community to stay connected. 

I wonder: As a new user, once I click on ‘Teachers’ and it takes me to ‘Create Account Page’, I want to know how the rest of the stakeholders stay connected to my classroom. 

Recommendation: I would add two bullet points that highlights the relationship between the stakeholders.

2 . Setting Up

I signed up as a teacher with ClassDojo and set up a classroom with three learners. 

Two points to highlight here:

• As soon as I added a learner, the app sent me an in-app notification to connect families. The experience is truly like building a community around the classroom. 
• As a teacher, I can click pictures, share videos as a way to keep parents updated.

The class setup flow was intuitive and the flow was complete in a few clicks. 

I wonder: As a teacher, I have three choices to share feedback with parents. The first time I looked at this, it left me questioning the intent of these choices.

Why would a teacher choose to not share or have the choice to filter feedback?

3. Teacher Resources

ClassDojo creates and curates content for teachers, parents and school leaders. Let’s take a look at the teacher resources:

I wonder: As a teacher, I need quick tips for remote learning, communicating with parents and so on.

Recommendation: I would add the top three learnings on the app followed by the option to download the pdf. 

4. Positive reinforcement

ClassDojo positive reinforcement is intuitive. Students receive points for positive behavior. For improvements, the teachers mark ‘needs work’. 

Apart from behavior points, teachers have a toolkit that helps them customize their classroom.

The toolkit includes options like:

• Create an randomized group
• Timer for timed projects
• Noise meter to manage classroom chaos 

The most unique is BIG IDEAS. Based on the theme, like empathy, growth mindset etc, teachers can send students these series of videos. My favorite was Conundrums. These are inquiry based questions to encourage critical thinking and dialogue. 

I wonder: Access to the toolkit is through the ‘Class’ Page (Demo is my Class name). I need to scroll the navigation bar to the end, click on ‘More’ to access the toolkit.

Recommendation: The toolkit is a top feature and I believe it should be the first option on the navigation bar like shown on the second screen below.

Overall observations:

• Intuitive design with simple navigation and minimal clicks.
• Features are based on teacher needs – A place to note down attendance, sharing class status with parents and school leaders etc. None of the features seemed unnecessary and redundant. 

Through my research about the company and using the product from a teacher’s perspective, it’s evident that ClassDojo was built to reinforce student behavior and connect classrooms. While the legacy app remains free, in 2018, ClassDojo launched their first monetized product, Beyond School for families which focuses on helping kids learn skills at home. Excited to see ClassDojo’s next phase as they build a solution for learning at home.

Did you enjoy this one in the product deconstruct series? I’d love to hear from you!

References:

https://www.edsurge.com/product-reviews/classdojo

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/as-education-shifts-online-classdojo-serves-51-million-students-worldwide-announces-profitability-and-new-solo-capitalist-funding-301216471.html

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/classdojo

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/classdojos-second-act-comes-with-first-profits/

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