Regardless of the subject you teach, you expect your students to rise to the challenges you present them with. With that said, many of us have had to take time away from a particularly challenging content objective to help our students develop the resilience necessary to face these challenges.  This form of perseverance is perhaps best described by Dr. Robert Brooks of the Center for Development and Learning.  Dr. Brooks describes resiliency as “the capacity to deal successfully with the obstacles in the road that confront us while maintaining a straight and true path towards life’s goals.” Students who develop a “resilient mindset” can handle the challenges we give them with greater effectiveness and success.  When we take the time to help our students develop a “resilient mindset” we teach them to believe that they have the ability to solve problems and make decisions and thus, “are more likely to view their work as challenges to confront rather than as stressors to avoid.”

Resiliency is a 21st century skill that can enable our students become the gregarious and ingenious thinkers we know they can be.  With this in mind, we at edUpgrade set out to create a  to create a technology-rich opportunity to bring innovative ed. tech. entrepreneurs into your classroom via digital media. The clips below provide your students with an opportunity to engage with the real-world and practice critical skills.

The first clip provides a link to a typographic edition of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”. Following that are links to videos of ed. tech. entrepreneurs reflecting on the meaning of Kipling’s poem. In 1-2 minutes clips, each innovator discusses the creativity, self-motivation and emotional intelligence needed to overcome challenges.  Use these clips as a catalyst for discussing resiliency with your students. This discussion can be easily integrated into all subject areas and used to foster a productive classroom environment where students rely on coping strategies that are growth-fostering rather than self-defeating.

Poem Handout

Animated Typography of Kipling’s poem “If”

THIS PREVIEW WILL HAVE YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT! CHECK IT OUT!

Whenever I’m bringing a new technology or program into my classroom, I always want to have a backup plan. That way I can be sure that my students will continue to learn when, for whatever reason, the original plan doesn’t work out as I’d imagined it would. Below is a preview of the lesson I’m making for every teacher whose wanted to try something new but worried about what he/she would do if the program/device didn’t work as planned.

By Jennie Dougherty | English Teacher | edUpgrade’s Director of Teacher Innovation

Exhausted by the task of scanning and tagging thousands of pages of curriculum, I was overwhelmed and vulnerable to the kind of pictures Evernote was posting online.

With a super cute pic like this, why would I have any reason to doubt that Evernote could meet my needs. The artists and marketers who drew this knew what a teacher wanted. But it wasn’t just about looks, we also had a lot in common. Here I was trying to get rid of my binder system and there it was offering me digital notebooks for all my content.

I used the Evernote clipper tool to grab websites and add them to my digital notebooks, which helped me overcome the disappointment I felt when I realized the actual program was less attractive than I’d anticipated.

Things began to fall apart the second I got seriously involved. Uploads took too long and there wasn’t enough storage capacity, so I had to wait an entire month to get more space before I could continue transferring my curriculum from paper to PDFs. It was making me doubt my decision to leave my old binder system.

It wasn’t like Evernote was the only curriculum management system I’ve been using since school began. I’ve tried Learn Boost, Better Lesson and InstaGrok. Heck I even gave Pinterest a shot! I will be the first to admit that unlike the first three champion programs listed, Pinterest was completely void of substantive features. So why was it that I wished the other programs were more like it? I found my answer in in last week’s New York Time’s Magazine cover story written by Charles Duhigg. And no, its not because I’m pregnant.

While this article was primarily focused on how corporations use shoppers’ data to target consumers, it contained a paragraph that made me realize what it was that I was looking for in a curriculum management program and why it mattered so much.

Duhigg’s description of habits made me confident knowing I wasn’t destined to drive around a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life. According to Duhigg, “[h]abits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced.” A teacher can escape the fate of driving around with a trunk full of binders for the rest of my life.  Eager educators should be cautioned that the author also acknowledges the difficulty of resisting old habits. “Unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically.” So, unless we find the new experience of lesson planning more rewarding than the old one, we may want to start thinking about investing in a trailer hitch.

Further explanation of my struggle to transfer my curriculum creation and organization to a digital medium was found in Duhigg’s concise explanation of habit formation. “The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use.” For me, this is every Sunday night, when my anxiety level peaks and prevents me from avoiding the reality that the coming week’s lesson plans are due in less than 12 hours. “Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional.” Lesson planning is obviously a mental routine, and anyone who read the sentence about my anxiety can figure its probably an emotional one as well, but for those who are not educators let me tell you that pulling all-nighters once a week 36 weeks a year-as I did my first year teaching-is excruciatingly physical.

“Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” Putting the all nighters, overwhelming anxiety, and mental strain aside, what I remember most about lesson planning is that clean white binder in which each item is carefully selected, organized, articulated, in a standards based, objective driven lesson plan-complete with daily agendas, objectives and assessments. For those who read last Sunday’s article, flipping through the pages of that binder, and placing it neatly in my LLBean tote is my “Febreze moment”. It is the reward I enjoy at the end of an established lesson planning routine. “Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges.” So its not that I crave the binders. Nor is it that the programs that I used were unable to fulfill the needs of my established lesson planning routine. The problem lay in the fact that creating curriculum online was not providing a reward equal to that I experienced when I used Pinterest or my old binder system.

So what was it that I was looking for in these programs? It wasn’t a specific feature, it was a feeling of reward. The reason I liked Pinterest more than those other programs is that it gave me a huge reward for gathering the materials I would use in my lesson. I was able to instantly see when others repined my  resources and what they grouped them with. Not only that, having all of my materials gathered in one place gave me a calming perspective and let me to recognize and admire the work I had accomplished as I began organizing each of the materials that I had gathered. Unfortunately Pinterest is all looks, and does not, I repeat DOES NOT, provide a platform suitable for anything more than the most superficial lesson planning. So what was a teacher to do? Where would I find a program that would support a digitally enhanced curriculum and provide the reward I was seeking? Turns out, I’d already found the alpha I was looking for all along.

When I first alpha/beta tested this program back in July I could see its potential, as well as the fact that it was having an identity crisis, and didn’t really know what it wanted to be. Suffice it is to say, I was thrilled to continue collaborating with the genius mind behind this program, Eric Simons a member of ImagineK12s first cohort and a recent high school graduate who lives in Silicon Valley building insanely awesome edtech apps! This is always a point I like to bring up with any of my Juniors who doubt their potential. Since releasing the alpha version of Class Connect, Eric has made strategic pivots and redesigned every last line of code to meet the needs of the educators who tested class connect’s earliest iteration. I have never witnessed a more thoroughly responsive developer/entrepreneur. Today, it is my pleasure to honor his program Class Connect with the distinction of being a Teacher Approved Technology.

Class Connect is a web based application, which means that you can use it from anything that can access the internet-no downloading or installation required (score!). This application allows educators to gather, organize, and share their entire curriculum-from the documents, to the documentaries to the awesome digital resources our students deserve. Here’s a quick overview of the reasons Class Connect earns the distinction of being Teacher Approved:

• Recognizes that a lesson is more than a plan
• Gives me a place where we can save and organize all of the content required for the 21st century curriculum.
• Makes Curriculum Design a Rewarding Experience
• Saves time! gives you back the time you would have spent emailing lesson plans to admin., copying documents from lesson for students who were absent, and scheduled for working collaboratively with colleagues.
• Students and Teachers can be better protected from the content that lurks around the edges of the valuable digital resources we want our students to access, analyze and ultimately create.
• Save money would have spent on binders and paper…for more specific details see previous post
• Provides a catalyst for making every classroom a blended learning environment.
• Makes it easier for every teacher, and thereby every student, to use digital technology and digital materials. – It will help us defy the dismal stats. from 2000 that you can check out below
• Its free! Yay!
• Promotes collaboration! ***More to come in a follow up interview with Eric!
• Its not going to automatically share your work with the world! I can share my entire unit (digital items and all)

Clip Art Illustrations of Teacher, Binder, Computer and Stacks of Books are from Discovery Education’s Clip Art Gallery created by Mark A. Hicks, illustrator.

I am excited to announce that the initial vision of beta classroom is getting bigger and better! Our name is changing but our mission stays the same as we build off of the lessons learned in Beta Classroom and launch a new venture, called edUpgrade.

No longer the mission of a single teacher, I’ve got two soul-driven co-directors and as a team we’ve got the collective expertise and excitement to maintain the mission and do even more to conntect innovators, support teacher insights, and make technology access more equitable. edUpgrade wants to provide every teacher with the platform to create and manage their own “beta classroom” and become part of a bigger collective movement to put great innovators-the people-not just the institutions-at the center of the ed. tech. conversation.

Sincerely,

Jennie Dougherty

edUpgrade’s Director of Teacher Innovation

English Teacher, Brockton High School, Brockton MA.

Captain of Team Beta Classroom

Beta Classroom is the blog of a teacher (me!) who went on a mission to get technology for my classroom, which is situated in one of the largest urban high schools East of the Mississippi. My mission led me to established relationships with programers and CEO’s who are currently developing the latest educational technologies.

I gave them free feedback and they gave me, and eventually a whole team of teachers from across the nation, access to the technology of tomorrow. Our feedback shaped the development of these innovations to meet the needs of our classrooms. These connections provided our students-many of whom are taught in technology deserts-the opportunity to be the first to try cutting edge programs and to have a voice in shaping future development.

From these relationships, I also gained mentors who provided me with angel-like protection and guidance as I continued to discover the value and potential of connecting innovative educators and entrepreneurs. I am honored and humbled by the extraordinary individuals who have supported me in this endeavor.

Today, I am excited to announce that I’ll be making the initial vision even bigger and better with the launch of a new venture, called edUPGRADE, that will build off of the lessons learned in Beta Classroom. In order to do this, I’ll be joined by two soul-driven co-directors. As a team we’ve got the collective expertise and excitement to continue this awesome journey.

At edUPGRADE, we will be getting feedback from our users– teachers and developers–seeing what works, trying new things, and tweaking our model as we go. Right now, our activities are pretty instrumental– connecting teachers to tools, providing feedback to developers– but we see all of this as the means to our even bigger vision where visionary, innovative educators and technologists can come together to  disrupt the way ed tech is created and adopted.

No longer the mission of a single teacher, edUPGRADE will provide every teacher with the platform to create and manage their own “beta classroom” and be part of a bigger collective movement to put great innovators– the people, not just the institutions– at the center of the ed tech conversation.

I am calling out every rock star educator, punk technologist and friend of our revolution to join edUPGRADE and continue our adventure to  disrupt the way ed tech is created and adopted. I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

What began as a single teacher and a beta classroom blog, grew into a network of 150+ innovative educators from around the United States. While we are from all over the K -12 spectrum, we are united in our joy of beta testing ed. tech. and giving our students the opportunity to be the first to try out and use new programs.

On Feb. 15th, Beta Classroom will relaunch as the incorporated nonprofit edUpgrade. While the name is changing, the mission stays the same.  The edUpgrade co-founders are dedicated to supporting the work of rock star teachers and the punk ed. tech. entrepreneurs we work with. On the 15th, we will be presenting the national network of innovative educators with a portfolio of betas that have the potential to optimize our practice and our students outcomes. In exchange for free access to beta innovations, these classroom rock stars will be providing the highest quality feedback-telling what we love; what we dream it could be.

We ask each beta to be in our portfolio because we think it is awesome and has the potential to positively transform our classrooms. As such, these betas have the greatest potential to benefit from the powerful feedback that comes from classroom facing teachers who are hungry for the chance to shape the technology of tomorrow.

We are looking for classroom agents of change, tech. visionary, or friend of this revolution to support our mission.

Earlier this summer, I worked with 3 extraordinary entrepreneurs to collaboratively co-author a response to Edsurge’s beta bill of rights. What we came up with was a best practices for educator and entrepreneur collaboration. With these principals in mind I continued my mission this fall and quickly learned several important lessons.

LESSON 1: “Ms. D., B.Y.O.D.?! DO YOU WANT ME TO GET JUMPED?”
It would have to reward teachers with the opportunity to earn devices that are inequitably distributed among this nation’s classrooms. This lesson came from one of my students and is therefore the most important of all. I went into this academic year psyched to get the B.Y.O.D. message to my students. 20 minutes into my first day of class, a student raised her hand and asked, “Ms. taking out your smart phone can get you jumped. I don’t care if other students see me take out my smart phone, but I know some of my friends would be worried that taking out their phone would make them a target.” Time stops and I feel my face flush with shame at not being able to predict the infinite ways that inequality saturates every pore of my classroom. As a teacher, my first priority is to keep my students safe. 20 minutes into the school year and I had received my first major set back. I tell my students that resiliency is a 21st century skill, and feel my determination calcify as I inform them that I refuse to deprive them of the opportunity to have their education positively transformed by 21st century technology. After a momentary pause, I explain that I will be bringing enough devices for the class to work in small groups and experience the awesome betas I had the privilege of testing over the summer. The next day, and every day since then, I have brought a laptop computer, two ipod touch devices, a smart phone and an ipad with me to school each day. Moreover, I’ve become resolute in my commitment to creating an opportunity for teachers to be classroom agents of change and obtain the devices that they and their students need.

LESSON 2: I CAN AFFORD 2 IPADS
I am not satisfied with solving the problem for just my classroom. The fact is that I promised the lead teachers of the network that I would find a way to get them the devices they deserve. These educators are leaders because they have used technology to innovate the classroom and powerfully optimize the education of their students. So I took it upon myself to get the devices, and as a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I learned another important lesson: I can afford 2 ipads. As a full time public school teacher, living at home, and paying off student loan debt, I can afford 2 ipads.

LESSON 3: A LETTER TO THE BIG DOGS
How could I get them the devices? The network of educators testing out these betas realized how profound an impact they could have on the classroom. Yet, many of our students did not have the devices to access these programs and no teacher would ever put a student’s well being as risk no matter what the benefit. So what to do? The network was created to give teachers a voice in shaping the technology of tomorrow as well as providing fledgling entrepreneurs and visionary technologists with the opportunity to get feedback necessary to develop extraordinary programs. I can’t ask these entrepreneurs to buy ipads for classrooms; they don’t have the funding and it would create a conflict of interest and undermine the integrity of our feedback and thereby the strength of teacher’s voices. Last summer, I wrote a letter and even shared it with my students as an example. I titled it “Letter to the Big Dogs”, and sent it to the heads of Gazelle with the hopes of getting one set of devices. While that failed I wasn’t deterred and went through with setting up a page where the money earned from old devices could be donated. This idea has not had the success I hoped it would. Another option that became very clear was to sell reports of these betas to investors. I may be a teacher and without an MBA but I know what evil smells like, and that kind of thing reeks of wrongness. It would be like publishing a wedding announcement with a photo of you from middle school…you know the one before you got your braces taken off, when you thought that nothing was cooler than a baby-t and overalls. While the last of these assumptions was in fact correct, not every decision we make as tweens was equally wise. While this period of growth is a necessary part of self-discovery, a summary of that mistake filled journey does not capture the magnificent person you are and the bright future ahead of you. While I am sure there are hipsters with save the date announcements featuring snapshots from their respective tween years, the other 99% of us get why its not okay to sell information about the highs and lows of a beta’s early development.

LESSON 4: I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE
I couldn’t not do this alone. Even with the League of Friends supporting me as mentors and guardian angels, the mission deserves more than I alone could give. Thankfully I met the individuals with the audacity, energy, and rock star status to join me. Together Beth Rabbitt, a doctoral fellow at Harvard innovation lab, Ben Berte, a co-founder of Socrative, and myself co-founded edUpgrade. During this founding period we addressed each of the lessons learned and sketched a plan of action to ensure the ideas and voices of betas and educators have the chance to work in symbiotic collaboration and produce new and awesome technologies.

 IClicker                    QClick,                   AClick

When first developed, the devices pictured above were carefully marketed as “student response systems.” Well, you can bet it took about five minutes in your typical classroom before that marketing strategy met its maker. “Response system”? Hah! First, it looks like a remote control; second, it makes a clicky noise. Ergo, it’s a “clicker”.

The first student response system was called “The Classroom Performance System”, but the fact is that the technology, even its name, is ultimately determined in the classroom. Don’t believe me? Just look at what they choose to name the latest models above, and then decide who the big dog of the ed. tech. world is. But I digress, and now turn to the reasons for which these clicker systems are seriously powerful tools.

+ Clickers Make Data Collection and Assessment Instant and Easy. Student’s responses are instantly available to help the teacher guide their instruction. In addition to this, responses are saved, which makes it even easier to track participation and student understanding.

+ Clickers Make Students More Interactive. Today’s tech-savvy students expect technology to be a part of their learning process, just as it is a part of their social life and daily routine. By projecting student’s responses, you ensure the opinion of even the quietest student will be counted by the system.

+ Clicker Systems Save Time No longer do we have to manually grade through hundreds of slips of paper or sticky notes each day.

Costing between $500 and $3,000 for a classroom set, these clickers have so much potential that teachers like myself often contemplate which organ to sell in order to bring one into our own classroom. Cost isn’t the only drawback, another is the fact that the vast majority of these systems do not allow students to write short answer responses. As an English teacher, such responses are necessary for me to determine the extent to which my students have learned that day’s lesson. These are the drawbacks, I noticed before I was introduced to Socrative. The latest teacher approved technology, Socrative is transforming the technology we’ve had into the technology we’ve always wanted.

Socrative: What A Teacher Really Wants

My philosophy majoring heart skipped a beat when it first heard about Socrative, a Boston-grown beta-technology. Earlier this summer I had the pleasure of meeting with Ben Berte who is not only an official member of Socrative’s super team of educators, entrepreneurs and engineers but also an incredible teacher willing to teach me about Socrative. Unlike the clicker systems described above, Socrative is a FREE online application. Don’t let that “free” factor scare you off! Its website looks sharp-like Martha Stewart’s layout editor teamed up with Apple’s website design squad.

You can use your smart phone, ipad, laptop, desktop, or ipod touch, to run Socrative. Also, because it’s an internet application, Socrative doesn’t have to be installed onto any computers! For many teachers this is a double blessing because it means that we won’t have to get permission from IT administrators or spend an hour installing it. After you set up an account you can create multiple choice, true/false, short answer and Exit Ticket questions. It’s so easy to create these questions, that I will most certainly add questions generated by my students during class. With this brief intro, it is an absolute pleasure to celebrate Socrative as the latest teacher approved technology to will help me and my students achieve our highest potential.

Features of Latest Teacher Approved Technology

+Reports and Analysis of Student’s Work

I like assessment, I believe in using daily evaluations to determine the scope and sequence of my lessons. This worked out perfectly for me my first year, because what’s more fun that collecting over 100 exit tickets everyday, reading and grading each, entering those grades into the school’s gradebook, and generating an analysis with which I can plan the next day’s activator? What’s that you say? I must have slept at my desk? You are correct.

I have spent countless evenings at my desk; ultimately, using the scraps of paper with my student’s answers as a pillow to keep my drool from reaching my keyboard. After these nights, I begin my class grumbling about my made up dog’s affinity for stationary as I passed each of these slips back to my students. With Socrative, my pedogogical convictions don’t have to come at the expense of other important things in life like balance, sleep, sanitary conditions, etc…The power of Socrative is that it emails me reports that include not only the questions I created but also my student’s responses. These reports can be downloaded as spreadsheets and will ultimately cut the time it takes to evaluate student’s current comprehension and plan for the next day. In addition to this, I will have more time to create and post follow-up assignments for students who need extra-practice.

+ Rocketships!

In Dennis Villano’s review of Socrative he  noted the program’s “space race” feature. In his review, Dennis Villano explained how “Teachers can also create questions that students answer in a ‘Space Race.’ Students answer questions as individuals or as part of a team and try to finish the race first.” A straightforward and clear description? Yes. A missed chance for a standing ovation? Absolutely! I mean come on, the program even has the space ships already created and ready for blast off! Talk about a great way to keep students doing small group work, staying on task, and being effective. Its like these rocketships come straight out of a Doug Lemov playbook. What would easily be described by both Lemov and David Levin, as “Vegas”, the space race is that element of sparkle or fun that reinforces not just academics generally but one of the day’s learning objectives. It’s a fun game that won’t give birth to a monster that takes on a life of its own. Its objective oriented, meaning that it aligns itself to your objective, and keeps students aware of their progress (and that of other groups). With the space race covering those bases, I can help my students remain not just engaged but on point.

+ Increase “Agility”

Today’s Take-away:

Some argue that, Socrative’s best feature is the ease of use for students and teachers. I, however, know that what makes Socrative a teacher approved technology isn’t the fact that its easy to use, for this is a quality I’ve found in unapproved technologies as well. The greatest quality is that it makes the most difficult and effective practices easy. The pay off of best practices makes them well worth it, and with Socrative I’ll have the “agility” I need to make those best practices into daily practices. Anyone interested in learning more about Socrative should visit the website http://www.Socrative.com, or Ben’s blog http://socrativegarden.wordpress.com/.

This summer, I went on a mission to get technology for my classroom, and along the way I established relationships with programers and CEO’s who are currently developing the latest educational technology. I got free access to the educational technology of tomorrow, and helped shaped it to meet the needs of my classroom this fall. Now, I’m looking for other teachers to work with me, no previous experience with technology is necessary.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN JOINING TEAM BETA CLASSROOM SUBMIT INFORMATION BELOW.

I had the privilege of working with rock star entrepreneur Sam Chaudhary before the rest of the world stormed the stage. [Check out Sam's latest post to the Beta Classroom site!]

Beta testing this incredible program allowed me to recognize its extraordinary potential and award it the title of “Teacher Approved Technology” months ago (you can check out the review and original beta test video here). 

While beta testing, Sam and I realized the importance of documenting the benefits of successful collaborations between ed. tech. entrepreneurs and teachers. In honor and celebration of Class Dojo’s victory, I proudly republish the thoughts we put down while collaborating via google doc. sometime before dawn in early July. For full explanation of what it takes to have a successful symbiotic collaboration between ed. tech. and teachers, here-> Best_Practices If you are a teacher interested in checking out other programs like class dojo, you should join our team of teachers who help shape the ed. tech. of tomorrow!  

Benefits Sam Gained From Partnership with Beta Classroom

1. Told us that we were solving a problem. Speaking with you gave us a strong signal to go ahead with what we were doing – people underestimate the importance of these types of morale boosts.

2) Explicitly told us what was important to you, or what you’d expect. I think your ‘stream of consciousness’ narration throughout the video really helped us understand what you wanted to do, and therefore what we need to do to fit with your work patterns.[1]

1. Implicitly revealed needs. For example, when you were choosing the T-shirt icon from the negative behavior, you had to scroll through a bunch of icons without knowing when it was going to come up. We’re now building a ‘lightbox window’ so you can choose the icon while looking at the whole set, rather than clicking along until you find it.[2]

4) At numerous points through the video, you highlighted a lot of bugs! This is fantastic because as we are following the lean startup philosophy of ‘release early, release often’ – and the fact that we’ve been going for just 4 weeks! – we frequently don’t have enough time to catch all the bugs – which is why it’s important to have an engaged group of beta testers like you to say ‘hmm… that seems weird!’

1. You came to us, without us getting in touch via friends of friends, or other ties. You were doing it off of your own initiative and and talking about their that are important to you.  This is a subtle distinction but when it comes to feedback, it means you are very ‘mission-driven’ and concerned about making this useful for you in your context, because ultimately you want to use it. It is different when someone is using it not only because it is useful, but also because their indirect relationship with us! This meant, I feel, that we got direct, unfiltered feedback – which all startups need more of!!

6) Thoughts on product deployment: as startups, we make assumptions about the environment in which our products will operate. It is awesome to hear from you what actually happens in the classroom, e.g. ‘my wireless used to slow down when multiple people at the middle school accessed it’.

[1]For example, at one point you said that ‘all programs we use ask me to re-type students names one by one (other than the one which is mandated by the school), so I don’t mind doing it again… I do think that there’s got to be a way to just paste in a list’. This made us realize that if we’re going to be better than other programs, we’ve got to make something as simple as adding a class list be a really awesome experience. We’re now building in a ‘copy and paste a list of names’ feature, as a direct consequence of your feedback.

[2]A second example of this was when you logged in with your phone, and it took ages to load – you filled in the silence with conversation – you were praising us, which was great haha :p – but which suggested to me that the performance of the web app is too slow.

Benefit of working with Sam and Class Dojo:  

+ Added Value – Freedom of movement! I will no longer will I be forced to choose between standing near my keyboard or using a paper seating chart to record student participation points.  This application allows me to be where I need to be-with my students, and easily keep track of class participation points.  Additionally, the program provided me with an analysis of the feedback I give my students which will help me make better decisions about how I encourage my student’s to succeed.

+ Time Saved – 3 hours/week (at least) that I usually would have spent deciphering, entering and analyzing participation point charts at the end of the week!  Saves me time in my efforts to contact parents to let them know of their child’s successes in class.

+ Improves Teacher’s Efficiency and Practice: Gives parents and students access to technology so that parents can access their child’s data and see how they performed in class each day.

+ Optimizes Student Learning – Helps make learning more fun for my students and provides them with a better understanding of positive/productive behaviors and choices