When Covid brought the world to a sudden standstill, schools across the country were left scrambling to figure out how to communicate with students, parents, and colleagues while continuing to manage instruction. Many schools pivoted to various online learning platforms like Class Dojo and Seesaw while others floundered, trying to find a solution that meets everyone’s needs.
As a parent and (former) teacher, the pandemic only highlighted the real and significant problems I’ve seen firsthand in our education system. Problems including inherent inequities, misguided focus on grades and testing, lack of creativity and overall poor student motivation.
EZ Stickerbook is one program that emerged from the chaos of virtual learning as a partial solution to some of these issues. It’s a simple but highly effective tool to help keep students engaged and to democratize education. EZ Stickerbook is free and what’s most impressive to me, is that it meets the needs of all kinds of classrooms and all types of teachers.
Too many online platforms are overly complex for students, expensive for teachers, and take the joy out of learning. As a teacher, I was constantly bombarded with new apps to try with the promise to revolutionize education. I understand the frustration of trying to juggle too many programs with too many bells and whistles.
EZ Stickerbook is brilliant in its clear message. It’s meant to provide an experience of delight, accountability, and ownership without all the extra clutter of most popular educational platforms.
Unlike any other platform on the market, EZ Stickerbook seamlessly integrates with how you teach – whether you teach reading, math, music, or ballet. It works as a complete student, teacher, parent communication and engagement platform disguised as a sticker book.
Why stickers?
The backbone of EZ Stickerbook is stickers. This simple reward system has been effective for decades for a very good reason. Kids love them! EZ Stickerbook takes this classic concept and moves it online for increased functionality and universal access. (No more lost or destroyed sticker books!)
Stickers are an excellent way to incentivize and reward students for good work. In an article from Psychology Today, author Amy Przeworski, Ph.D. writes, “…the data overwhelmingly indicates that sticker charts DO work to help a child to change his or her behavior.” EZ Stickerbook engages students with one-of-a-kind designs and an easy interface so kids can maintain ownership of their learning goals. Parents and teachers can easily monitor progress as well.
EZ Stickerbook or Class Dojo
Although EZ Stickerbook was not created to compete with any other platform on the market, it does share some similarities with Class Dojo. Both can be used for behavior management and to foster communication between parent, teacher and student.
Class Dojo primarily serves a specific niche: it works well in a traditional classroom setting. Teachers across the country use Class Dojo primarily as a behavior management tool. Students are given points for positive behaviors and often get that immediate feedback during the class. Class Dojo also allows teachers to post photos of student work and allows students to submit assignments on the platform.
With EZ Stickerbook, teachers can create assignments and send stickers with a message to individual students, or to a specific group of students. These messages can be sent privately or to the entire class. In this way, EZ Stickerbook uses positive reinforcement to reward good behavior. There are no grades or complicated point systems. It’s as simple as giving a sticker and watching students’ faces light up. As a parent, I can see exactly what stickers they received and why. I can message their teachers directly and see the messages between my kids and their teachers.
Supportive Encouragement
My own children love this kind of supportive encouragement. With feedback in the form of stickers, they grow confident and are reminded that school is fun! Instead of grades that can frustrate and depress them, stickers gently support them on their learning journey.
Where EZ Stickerbook really shines is how well it integrates with programs you may already be using and with how you already teach. It’s meant to compliment the systems you already have in place, not to replace them. It can be used with your current grading system and lesson plans. You do not need to create anything new or design new lessons to work with this program.
Class Dojo is great for tech savvy teachers who don’t mind keeping up with awarding points, managing photos, and student work on the app. Many teachers, like my son’s, use Class Dojo throughout the year but only on certain days. We love getting the updates but as I teacher, I know the time this takes.
Daily Use
EZ Stickerbook is designed to be used daily. Features such as graying out stickers are particularly useful. Students can see the reward they’ll get should they follow whatever goal you have set for them. No interrupting lessons or pressure to manage rewards.
One feature many students and teachers like about Class Dojo, is the competition it can create. Students can compete to see who gets the most points. EZ Stickerbook also can be used to create friendly competition among students and between classes.
EZ Stickerbook is a unique platform for all kinds of educators in that it rests on a very traditional, very established educational principle. Learning should be fun. Instead of focusing on arbitrary grades, or gamifying lessons to keep the attention of students, EZ Stickerbook takes it back to basics with our anything but basic sticker collections. This simple strategy works to motivate and delight students, so they genuinely want to improve and learn more.
Kathleen Siddell
Kathleen Siddell is a freelance writer and education activist. She previously taught secondary social studies for nearly a decade in the Connecticut public school system. She is passionate about exploring opportunities for meaningful education reform. You can find her drowning in the Twitterverse @kathleensiddell.
