Data Tracking Tools

            The first teacher I observed was in a fourth grade classroom with Jeremy. The lesson he was teaching was a history lesson about American symbols and their meanings. He did a mini-lesson for the whole class and then released them to work on an ongoing group project. While they worked, he circulated around the room with his iPad and his behavior management system: an iPad app called Class Dojo.

            Class Dojo is a free app that is continually being designed and re-designed by teachers. It is very easy to use and quite effective. It gives students the ability to create their own monster avatar online at home. Then in class on his iPad, Jeremy can easily give and take away points from students’ avatars based on their behavior. He sets the buy-in as some sort of party or reward if the students get up to so many points.

            The really awesome part of this app is the home/school link. Parents can log in online and see what points their child received that day, and even what time they were received. Jeremy gets to decide on the categories of points. Some of the negative categories include disrespect, blurting out, and off task. Some of the positive categories include good character, on task, and quiet in the halls. The parents can see, for example, that their child got a blurting out point at 9:45 in math class, but then got a good character point at 11:15 during lunch.

While there are many different kinds of behavior management systems, this piece of technology seems to work very well, with minimal teacher effort, and open parent/ teacher communication. It also has great student buy-in, and without that, no behavior management system would be effective.

            The next teacher I observed was in a fifth grade classroom with Alyssa. The lesson she was teaching was about drawing conclusions in language arts. She released the students to work independently on several different tasks and she read with several different students independently. While she was reading with them she was using her data tool on her iPad.  

            The data tool she was using is an iPad app called NoteTaker. This is a $5 app, which is a pretty good price for a helpful app. It is something that Alyssa found and decided to use on her own. There is no requirement from the district or school about it. It is very well designed and very easy to use.

Within the app she creates folders for all of her students. In each folder she takes anecdotal notes specifically about how they are reading. She works with the kids on setting goals for themselves and keeps those notes in their folders as well. She can also download PDFs into the app, so she can put a running record form in the kids’ folders and take notes right on it. She also has folders for each of her reading groups. These notes are just for Alyssa’s information so she can keep everything together. Parents or administration do not have access to this.

This is a very effective technology data-tracking tool. It does exactly what Alyssa needs it to do, and keeps all of her information in one place without using a ton of paper. There are many different systems of keeping anecdotal notes, but this seems to be one that is very organized and helpful to Alyssa.

The last teacher I observed was in a third grade classroom with Sarah. The lesson she was teaching was Social Studies about the Earliest Americans. She did an introduction whole group mini lesson, and then released the students to read in partners. As the students read, Sarah circulated through the room and took anecdotal notes in her data binder. She wrote about student behaviors and how they were reading aloud. After all the students finished reading, they had another class discussion about what they had read. Then, Sarah passed out an exit ticket quiz with two questions on it for the students to answer. When she graded these exit tickets, she recorded the results in her data binder.

            I did not directly observe her use any student data technology during the lesson, but we spoke after about what technology she does use. Her school uses Infinite Campus to record student achievement data. Because Sarah teaches in a charter school, the district requires that they use Infinite Campus, just like the district public schools have to. However, the district also requires the charter schools to pay $8 per student to use the Infinite Campus database.  The district designed this tool and it is a web-based program.

            As I mentioned in my observation of Sarah’s lesson, she keeps a paper data binder. Sarah explained that Infinite Campus was a somewhat difficult program to manipulate and she has to undergo continuous training to be able to navigate it well. She has on several occasions made mistakes or had the program malfunction, and she likes to have a hard copy for a backup. It is also easier for her to carry her binder around the room to record her grades. She does not keep behavioral or anecdotal notes on Infinite Campus, so she keeps all of those records in her data binder only.

Teachers have access to their gradebooks from any computer with Internet access, which is very convenient for them. Also, because this is a web-based gradebook, it is live. Meaning parents can log on whenever they want to and see a current, updated version of their child’s grades. Sarah explained that this is a good thing and a bad thing. This is good because parents know what is going on with their child at all times. They do not have to wait for a progress report to go home and be blind sighted by the fact that their child has poor grades. It keeps more open communication between parents and teachers. She did say that the parents that really need to keep on top of their children’s grades often choose not to. Which is not good. Although, Sarah can print a report of which parents are accessing the gradebook and how frequently they access it.   She said she also has some parents that become obsessive over the gradebook and question her about every mark that she gives their child.

Even though it can be difficult to use, Sarah believes that this is an effective way to keep student records, and keep communication between parents and teachers open. She had previously used another grade keeping program, and she said that all of the features of Infinite Campus and the parent access at home makes it a superior program, as long as you get the training to know how to use it.