Today I spoke with Sam Chaudhary, one of the driving forces behind Class Dojo. The promotional material for Class Dojo reads:

We’ve made a tool that hundreds of thousands of teachers and students love and use every day to build positive behavior and character strengths at school, with real-time feedback – but that’s just the first tiny step. 40 years of research and practice show that specific character strengths have a huge effect on test scores – as well as on average incomes, health outcomes and college dropout rates. So how do we create an education that doesn’t just build test scores, but also the character traits that make people successful in life? It’s a tough problem – and one that holds a real key to unleashing human potential. That’s what we’re doing.

I knew that Sam was going to impress me, simply because he was taking the time to have a conversation. We discussed my concerns about Class Dojo and he emphasised that its focus is on developing character strengths and traits as opposed to test scores. He wants to develop a system that moves beyond reward and punishment, and instead provides real-time valuable feedback. He argued that tech has a role to play in supporting this process. When I asked him why he advertised his product as ‘behaviour management software’, he responded that this is what is needed to get people to sign up. Sam described Class Dojo as like a Trojan horse to lead teachers towards better practice. When we spoke about whether school had to be a game, he commented, “I don’t want to wait until school is not a game.”

Sam is a passionate and articulate advocate and he wants to improve the way that we do school, by focusing on building character. The talk about feedback loops, self-reflection, and building character did impress me as worthy goals, but I don’t think that tech can do this (yet?), beyond providing some basic support mechanisms. I am pleased though, that someone like Sam is trying to head down this path.

Sam will be at ISTE and, due to a late change in my June/July plans, I now will be too, and I look forward to catching up with him in person.