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Updates From ClassDojo

How to Change Education (From the Ground Up)

ClassDojo

2019-02-28

ClassDojo schools 2019

Seven years ago, my co-founder Liam and I launched ClassDojo from the studio apartment we shared. Today, ClassDojo serves tens of millions of children in over 180 countries every day, and growing fast. This year, we’re working on sharing a bit more about what ClassDojo is all about.

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  • Updates From ClassDojo

Today, we’re introducing ClassDojo Beyond School to our community. It’s our first-ever product just for families, and we’re excited to share more about it!

ClassDojo Beyond School started just like everything we do at ClassDojo – by listening to teachers and families. Over the years, we’ve spoken with thousands of families and we heard a common theme: families want to help their children learn and grow. This became particularly apparent when we released the Big Ideas series on Growth Mindset, Empathy, and Mindfulness. Teachers were sharing these videos home, and families kept emailing us asking for more!

We realized that we think a lot about the formal learning experiences happening inside classrooms, but children spend a significant portion of their day at home, and that time is full of opportunities for small, informal learning experiences. From that, an idea was born: ClassDojo Beyond School. ClassDojo Beyond School helps families turn those opportunities into amazing learning experiences they can share in together.

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In ClassDojo’s first week in 2011, our founders Sam and Liam were really excited to see 80 teachers use ClassDojo in their classrooms (you know who you are!). Today, we’re humbled to see how our community has grown to millions more in over 180 countries. Teachers, parents, and students everywhere use ClassDojo to build stronger relationships with each other, working together to improve education in their communities. This is the heart of our mission.

These relationships require trust. That’s why every ClassDojo product is designed with privacy and security first; we have a fundamental belief in doing what’s right for you, our community.

Protecting your privacy is fundamental to the trust we need to improve education together, and we work extremely hard every day to earn yours. That’s why we made this Privacy Center to provide even more transparency and peace of mind over how ClassDojo protects your privacy and security, and gives you control over your information. Here are a few highlights from it:

  1. Control: we believe your information is yours, so in our privacy policy, we’ve legally committed to never selling or renting it to anyone. We never share any student personal information with advertisers or marketers.

  2. 12-month deletion: we protect students with our industry-leading policy. We don’t keep student personal information schools don’t need and we delete students’ feedback points after 12 months.

  3. Privacy: ClassDojo is compliant with COPPA, FERPA, is certified by TRUSTe, and will be compliant with GDPR when it goes into effect in Europe on May 25th, 2018. ClassDojo is also a signatory to the Student Privacy Pledge, agreeing to a set of principles intended to safeguard student privacy, including responsible stewardship, protection, and transparent handling of student personal information.

If you ever have questions, please drop us a note any time on privacy@classdojo.com. We’re here to help! 🙂

Thank you for being part of our community – we can’t wait for all that’s to come!

— The ClassDojo Team

**FAQs on ClassDojo’s privacy practices**

What is personal information?
Basically, personal information is information that can be used to identify or contact a particular individual or a particular device. You can see our definition here.

What personal information do you collect about students?
No part of our mission requires sensitive information about students, so we don’t collect any. We ask for the minimum necessary information from students to provide and improve the service and for educational and safety purposes: often just a name. We don’t need or ask for anything else, such as gender, social security number, email, address, or student ID. Please see our privacy policy for more details on information collected directly from students.

How long is student information stored?
We protect students with our industry-leading policy: we don’t keep student personal information schools don’t need and we delete students’ feedback points after 12 months.

Will my information ever be sold or rented to other organizations?
No. On ClassDojo, your personal information is yours. ClassDojo never sells or rents personal information to any third parties, for any reason.

Does ClassDojo share student information with Facebook?
No.

Will ClassDojo ever sell advertising targeted at my child?
No, we will never share student personal information to advertisers or marketers.

ClassDojo is a free app. How does the company make money?
ClassDojo has grown through incredible love and word-of-mouth, and is funded by investors who believe in our mission. We plan to make money through premium features we’re developing that parents and schools can pay for. Everything currently available on ClassDojo will remain free for teachers.

What happens when you work with third parties?
We do not sell or rent any information to third parties. Like every company, we work with selected third-party service providers to help provide our service – for example, we work with a service to help us send emails, instead of building that service ourselves.

Where we work with third parties, we mandate that they comply with our Privacy Policy and have contractual commitments ensuring comprehensive data protection and security protocols that satisfy all our requirements (GDPR, FERPA, COPPA, etc.). Additionally, these service providers will not have the right to use your personal information beyond what is necessary for us to provide the services.

Here is a full list of the third-party services that help us provide you with ClassDojo’s service.

How and where is information stored?
ClassDojo’s servers are in highly secure, military-grade data centers that are access-controlled. ClassDojo uses bank-grade security at the software and network level to ensure all information is transmitted securely.

In Europe, will ClassDojo be in compliance with GDPR when it goes into effect on May 25, 2018?
Yes. ClassDojo is compliant with all applicable privacy laws, is certified under the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield, and will be in compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when it comes into effect on May 25, 2018. We’ll update you when any changes occur, and they will be reflected in our Privacy Policy.

In the US, how does ClassDojo comply with the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)?
ClassDojo has been granted the iKeepSafe COPPA Safe Harbor seal signifying our website and apps have been reviewed and approved for having policies and practices surrounding the collection, use, maintenance and disclosure of personal information from children consistent with the iKeepSafe COPPA Safe Harbor program guidelines. For additional information, please see our COPPA consent FAQ for schools and our FAQ for parents.

In the US, how does ClassDojo comply with FERPA?
Although FERPA is a law that applies to schools receiving funding from the Department of Education and does not apply directly to education technology vendors, ClassDojo’s practices fully support a school’s FERPA requirements and ClassDojo has earned a FERPA seal from iKeepSafe, an experienced privacy protection organization. Download our FERPA primer here for a helpful resource!

What about privacy outside the U.S. and Europe?
ClassDojo is used in over 180 countries, so we are always improving how we operate given where teachers are. For example, we comply with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

If you have questions about your specific country, please contact us at privacy@classdojo.com.

Today, we’re incredibly excited to announce our new collaboration with Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence to bring Mindfulness to millions of classrooms around the world! Together with Yale, we’ve created a set of activities related to Mindfulness for home and school; these will be coming out over the next two weeks.

Why mindfulness?

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Did you know Halloween is the most shared moment on ClassDojo? It’s true! Two times as many photos, videos, and messages are shared on Halloween than any other day of the year. That’s a lot of moments! And one little monster is the reason why…we’re talking about MOJO of course !🙂

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Teachers have posted over 3 million moments on Class Story since September! These are moments showing students working hard, having fun, and encouraging each other. And every time a teacher posts on Class Story, parents form a deeper connection with the classroom.

Beginning today, teachers can share videos on Class Story to make it even easier for families to be brought into the classroom experience. You’ll be able to record videos up to 15-seconds long, post to Class Story, and then see all the “likes” from parents roll in!

Here are a few tips for sharing videos on Class Story:
– Videos must be recorded using the ClassDojo iOS / Android app
– Record a 15-second video or even a series of clips up to 15-seconds long
– To record, just press and hold the record button
– Release the button to pause your recording, and then hold again to add another clip!
– Preview the video and then share to Class Story!

We’re excited to see how you use this new addition to Class Story. Have any amazing ideas for using videos to engage parents? Share them with us and the teacher community here!

ClassDojo Translate is now available for teachers and parents everywhere! This new addition to ClassDojo will help break down the language barrier between classrooms and homes. ClassDojo Translate enables families to translate all classroom announcements and messages into their preferred language, with just one tap. With teachers in over 90% of U.S. K-8 schools using ClassDojo, many parents previously left out can now play an even larger role in their child’s education.

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One of the reasons students, teachers, and parents love ClassDojo is how much positivity it brings to their classrooms. Teachers can easily encourage students for any skill or behavior. In doing so, students learn faster, feel excited to push forward, and even support their friends along the way.

Teachers also know it’s important to share helpful feedback and reminders about what “needs work.” For instances where students, for example, “distract others” or “talk out of turn,” teachers want to let them know that expectations aren’t met, but to do so in a caring and encouraging manner. This is why we built the “Needs Work” category in ClassDojo: to give teachers a simple way to give this type of feedback.

However, many teachers found the icons to be counterproductive. Our team interviewed and surveyed thousands of teachers, and most described these icons as “overly negative,” “non-constructive,” and “difficult to distinguish from each other.” They went further to say that students felt criticized. Teachers wanted these moments to help guide better decisions in the future, but that wasn’t always happening.

So, like everything we do at ClassDojo, we listened closely to these teachers, and collaboratively designed a refreshed set of icons with them!

Here are the four main changes to the icons:

  • Icons can now be used for either Positive or Needs Work behaviors
  • Each behavior’s point weight is now shown, with either a green or red background to make clear what type of feedback it is!
  • All the icons have been updated to be friendlier and more easily distinguishable from each other – meaning no more all red icons!
  • Oh, and we wanted to give teachers more icon choices, too!

So, without further ado, here is the refreshed look of your behavior icons!

DojiChange

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“Most great learning happens in groups. Collaboration is the stuff of growth.” – Sir Ken Robinson

From day one, ClassDojo has been built by listening to teachers and students. Today, after working with many wonderful teachers around the world, we’re proud to unveil our most exciting new feature: ClassDojo Groups!

ClassDojo Groups is the easiest way for teachers to bring teamwork to their classrooms. Groups gives teachers the ability to group students any way that works for their classroom: tables, project teams, reading groups, school houses – or even all of these! Teachers can then encourage the whole group, as well as any student in the group, with just ‘one tap’.

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In ClassDojo’s first week in 2011, we were really excited to see 80 teachers use ClassDojo in their classrooms (you know who you are!). Today, we’re humbled to see how this community has grown to millions more in over 100 countries. Teachers, parents, and students everywhere use ClassDojo to build stronger relationships with each other. This is the heart of our mission. ****

Of course, these relationships require trust. So, today we’re announcing two updates.

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