Reflection on my ClassDojo Seminar

For our final session together we all took a look at an E-learning resource and it’s effectiveness in the classroom. For my presentation, I took a look at the website ClassDojo; what once was a simple behaviour management tool has now grown into effectively a multi-faceted classroom-based social media experience which gave me an interesting crux to base my debate around. The glossy advertisement below will give you a brief overview of what ClassDojo aims to do.

When it first burst onto the scene in August 2011, ClassDojo simply offered a way for teachers to record and reinforce behaviour through a real time teacher-to-pupil feedback interface; this is steeped in B.F Skinner’s (1953) positive and negative reinforcement pedagogy. But since its infancy, ClassDojo has evolved to encompass other areas into its platform such as parental interaction and the ‘big ideas’ section which offer it a whole new dimension of pedagogical-based use to a teacher. During my seminar, everyone agreed that on face value ClassDojo seems like a classroom of the future as it encompasses so many different elements onto one easy interface, but if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

Williamson and Rutherford (2017) explain just some of the reasons as to why we should not all be downloading ClassDojo immediately. These reasons include some schools not seeking full informed consent from parents, the creation of a behaviour profiles for millions of children, removing the human element to behaviour management and the final and most important one, the possible sale of all the behaviour records and data. ClassDojo’s business model includes a ‘change of control’ clause meaning at any time ClassDojo could change their business plan and start targeted advertisement specifically tailored for that classroom or child, or they could sell all of the data to companies seeking to make a profit from the behaviour of children. Now I may seem like a stubborn Luddite who resents change through Orwellian scaremongering but I promise that these are the pressing issues that we must look at when we accept technology, or more pertinently multi-national corporations, into our classrooms.

Rashid (2017) would oppose my view stating that tools such as CassDojo lead to gamification which argues children will become more engaged in learning by incorporating the psychologically addictive elements from gaming into the learning environment. Pinkerton (2017) on the other hand argues that gamification simply normalises the idea of constant surveillance and judgment on behaviour and achievement to children as their every action is recorded for all to pass judgement on. Pinkerton argues that this leads to children never gaining an intrinsic want to learn as they strive for points instead of knowledge. I’m inclined to support Pinkerton fully; using ClassDojo introduces children to constant digitally monitoring meaning they may not develop any sort of valence for personal privacy; they will see nothing wrong with their every detail being tracked and recorded for constant scrutiny.

On face value, ClassDojo is a fantastic tool that enables teachers to reinforce behaviours, keep in contact with parents and promote a positive environment in their classroom. On the other hand, ClassDojo is a multi-million dollar Silicon Valley Tech company which statistically will either be bought out for huge sums of money by an investor seeking to monetise, or they’ll simply have to monetize it themselves; either way, through intrusively and consistently monitoring children’s behaviours and emotions we’ve created a psychological profile of every single child in the country and it’s now in the hands of people seeking to gain monetary value from our children’s psyche. Now call me old-fashioned, but that just isn’t right.