Behavior-tracking App

I saw a teacher use technology in a pretty interesting way that proved to be very effective in classroom management today. There is a new app called “Teacher Assistant Pro,” or something along those lines, that helps you track student behavior. You can input all of your students into this program, along with their parent’s phone and email addresses (if they have one). Whenever a student is unprepared, if they are acting out or talking, if they are misusing supplies, late, etc, you can quickly mark it on this app. Then, with a click of a button you can send all this information to print, you can send it in an email to the principle, a behavior teacher, or straight to their parents. The teacher that I was watching put her phone up onto the document camera so everyone could see exactly what she was doing on it. During the group activity (which was fairly rowdy at times) she would just start marking these behaviors on the program and students started to become very aware of when their actions have been taken note of.

To be honest all of this information can be kept track of the traditional way (the ol’ pen and paper route) but there was something about displaying it to the students and having their information linked to their parents and the principle (if she ever wanted to pass these behaviors along). I don’t really like the idea of bringing my phone around all the time and I feel like it would be a bit of a pain to be constantly plugging it in, but I thought it was a cool way to try something new. In the long run it might lose the effect that it had on the students, but from what I saw they started changing their actions so they wouldn’t get documented!