Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities

by John Warner

Apps like ClassDojo are used to track every moment of student behavior and performance, sometimes displaying this information on smartboards broadcast in the classrooms themselves, for example identifying those who are successfully following directions (gold star) or those whose dogs ate their homework (frowny face).3 This real-time tracking becomes a narrative of the collective class experience, even as it is happening, as illustrated by Natasha Singer, writing about ClassDojo in the New York Times: For better or for worse, the third graders in Greg Fletcher’s class at Hunter Elementary School always know where they stand. One morning in mid-October, Mr. Fletcher walked to the front of the classroom where an interactive white board displayed ClassDojo, a behavior-tracking app that lets teachers award points or subtract them based on a student’s conduct. On the board was a virtual classroom showing each student’s name, a cartoon avatar and the student’s scores so far that week.