Oct 29 2018
2 Comments
By chaifj 322monday21

Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wives, ClassDojo want to steal your privacy information

I chose to analyze the Privacy Concerns for ClassDojo and Other Tracking Apps for Schoolchildren article by Natasha Singer. Since I am not very good with keeping up to date using social media, I decided I would do a Twitter Rant. One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the fact that you cannot just go back and make edits to your tweets after the fact. I noticed this only when I realized that I did not add the #UWinDig tag after each tweet but with time, I will become more efficient at it. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am really enjoying the idea of exploring a new multimedia artifact and making an attempt to create something.

The article introduces an app called ClassDojo, which is an app that lets us track the behavior of our students by awarding or subtracting points based how we feel the students are conducting themselves. The app allows us to project it onto a smart board which shows the student’s cartoon avatars and the scores that they have achieved for the week. When we take away a point from a student, the app omits a rather disappointing sound whereas rewarding a point omits a positive sound. The app even allows teachers to send out notifications to parents whenever they would like to keep them in the loop.

When I think about this in my classroom experiences growing up, I think that having something like this would have been rather beneficial because it always seemed as if teachers were always trying to find ways to hold students responsible for their action while keeping track of it. As well, as a teacher I can see so many different ways to apply this in the classroom other than just the way it’s meant to be used. The capabilities of keeping parents informed about their children helps to bridge the gap between the crazy busy teacher and all of the parents wanting to know more information about how their child is doing.

However, some say that the app is being used without consideration of how the data being collected will be used later on. Some say that this type of classroom management method is out dated and that these apps are too subjective and might harm a student’s reputation by grouping them with the “wrong” kind of people. To me, I think that every type of technology is gathering some type of information and unless we want to go back to killing the environment by printing of more and more paper, then we have no choice but to use apps like these. As well, the company has put a statement in their Terms of Service that says they do not provide outside sources with the data collected. In regards to being out dated, I believe in the saying “work smart not hard” and so far, I have yet to be shown a more efficient way to teach students about being responsible for their action.

The last large concern that I am going to talk about is the thought that some teachers might not be getting permission from their schools or school boards to use these apps and how a parent either needs to have the teacher remove their student or email the company to have them removed. From my experiences thus far, I think that most schools have become aware of these types of apps and have either developed some way of vetting them or are in the process of developing ways. Yes, there are some places that do not track these things, but it seems like these are also the places who are stuck in the 1950s still.

Before reading this article, I would have found an app like this, and used it exactly how it would be suggested. I would probably have made little effort to come up with creative ways it can be used because of how terrible I am with taking something new and thinking outside the box or reading more into it through outside sources (youtube, blogs, reviews, etc.). As well, I never though to consider how the data might be used once collected or the effects that come after the fact. Thanks to this article, I have gathered a lot of ideas and information that I will carry forward.

Although there is a lot that can be done with this app and there are lots of concerns with it like the use of date collected, schools being more on top of tracking who’s using them, and how teachers are using them, I think that apps like these are allowing educators to become better organized and creative with their classroom management skills. I think that as long as we can continue to adjust and modify how we use them so that we can set goals for some students, motivate other to continue to progress, keep them on track or show progress, then I’m all for these apps.

You can either click on the hyperlink near the top, or scroll down to check out my Twitter Rant!

Cheers,

Jon

 

 

 

 

 

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