I was lucky enough to be paired with an associate teacher who completely embraced ClassDojo in his classroom. I immediately saw the motivation on the part of the students to acquire dojo points as soon as possible and I quickly took notes. After experiencing this for five weeks, I became committed to technology in the classroom – even after being surprised by a day long power outage. However, after reading Privacy Concerns for ClassDojo and Other Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren by Natasha Singer I feel completely blindsided. I assumed the choice to set a classroom to private was the extent of confidentiality required to protect students. It had never occurred to me that tracking behavioural habits could create marketable data for ClassDojo. Who does read through the 18 pages of a privacy agreement anyhow? We can not be completely confident in the privacy of our students being protected. To be honest, I’m currently on the fence about using ClassDojo in my future classroom. I was sold on it only a few days ago and now with this realization of media monitoring, I’m suddenly very uncomfortable with it.
I chose to create a storyboardthat.com comic strip for my multimedia reflection. I depicted a student who did not complete their math homework and a teacher who docked ClassDojo points because of it. Then, at home, mom knew about it and confronted him immediately. Also, because ClassDojo isn’t completely private, the neighbour knew about it as well!
