Getting Started Guide

The new version of our curriculum tracks your achievements and progress within the courses, to do that, we need to have you login.

• Click the “Log In” menu item to start the process.
• If you have a Facebook or Gmail account, please use that signin method by clicking the appropriate icon at the top of the login form. This is the easiest access to the site.
• If you don’t already have a username on our site, you can click the “Register” link at the bottom of the form.
• If you forget your password, there is a “Forgot Password?” link at the bottom of the form that will reset you password and email you the new password.

In this video, Dennis Parker talks about the importance of character and the process that you will use if you decide to take the “Dog Tag Challenge”.

Dennis Parker explains the dog tag reward system.

Goals are part of your everyday life whether it is personal, business, or school.  They provide you with a sense of direction, clear focus, and motivation for things that are important to your daily life.

We have included goal setting into the program for each week along with the lessons for each quality.  Goal planning can be done with almost any tool that you prefer to use.  This can be done on a piece of paper, journal, or formatted worksheet which we have provided in here.

If you want to always have your goal planning tool with you, you may want to use an app on your phone. There are many apps available on the Apple and Google app stores. The apps we recommend for usage with the Dog Tag Challenge are for task planning. Many are free for casual level usage and have iPhone, Android, Web and desktop versions. Following are 4 from a large list from a commercial software analysis guide.

• Any.do:  Has integrated login using Google , Facebook or Apple.  When you first sign in, it will have you create your first task and then will try to upsell you on a monthly plan, which should not be needed for most people. Adding subtasks is easy by clicking on the task you created and clicking the “Add a new subtask” link.  The task also has a note field where you can add how you succeeded at completing the task, or failed to make progress. It can also sync to the calendar on your phone.
• Todoist: Has integrated login using Google , Facebook or Apple.  Easy sign in with not upsell attempt.  This is fairly easy to get started with, but you may want to use the “Welcome” project to see how to create tasks, subtasks and schedules.  Provides a comments section for each task and subtask, where you can add note on successes and failures.
• MeisterTask: Integrated log in with Google, Facebook, Office 365 or Apple. When you start using this tool, it will have you create up to 3 tasks. Instead of creating subtasks, this software uses a task checklist to track the work need to finish the task/goal.  This is the easiest of the evaluated programs to get started with.
• AYOA: Integrated log in with Google, Facebook or Apple. This one has several different usages and will require that you pick how it is set up for your usage, so it may be a little intimidating if you haven’t already been using task management software, but it may be a good choice for more advanced users. 

Each week we are asking you to write out your goals using a tool that works best for you to complete the goal setting aspect of this program. On Evaluation Day we will be asking three questions about how you did on your goals for the week.  

Take some time to learn the menu system. Once you are logged in, your menu will have “Home”, “About”, “Dog Tag Challenge”, “My Account”, “Resources”, “Donate” and “Logout”. “My Account” has a sub-menu and if you just click on “My Account” you will get the user account page, including a trophy case that will display the dog tags that you earn. If you drop down the sub-menu, you will see “Courses, Awards and Profile” and “Discussion Forums“.

Note: If you are in a student group, some of these steps do not apply to you.

1. Click on the “My Account” menu and then click on the “Available Courses” tab.
2. The courses are arranged in the order that we recommend for learning the most about each of the 36 character traits. Find the first course that you want to take and click on the “See More” button.
3. Click on the “Take this Course” button. This will open the class for you and move the class to the “Active Courses” tab.
4. Click on the “… Day 1” lesson. Each character trait will have five lessons and each lesson takes about 15 minutes to complete.
5. Start your lesson by watching to the video.
6. Answer the Lesson Quiz questions and click the “Submit Quiz” button. Your answers are saved and if you bring up the same lesson in the future, your answers will be there and you will be able to change the answers.
7. You are finished with the lesson and you can close the web site or look at the next days lesson.
8. At the end of each lesson, you need to work on your goals.

Group learning helps you get the most out of the Dog Tag Challenge. See how easy it is to create your own group, assign courses to the group, add students and check the progress of your students.

Do you need to use Groups? Send an email to [email protected] to get access. Once you have access, you will see the Group Management menu items under “Dog Tag Challenge“.

This video below covers:

• Creating a group
  • Choose a name
  • Enter the number of seats (students, including the group leaders) that you need. Put in more than you think that you need.
  • If you have a logo that represents your group, upload it.
  • Enter the name and email of the group leader (you or someone else), the system uses this to match the userid.
• Manage a group
  • Add students
  • View progress reports for the students

You will need to develop your own method for leading discussions of the lessons, quiz answers or goal setting. We would like to build the discussion capability into the web site, but we need your input first. The two most likely ways of doing that would be with a Group Discussion forum or with Zoom meetings. We have set up a discussion forum to start collecting your ideas. https://www.developingcharacter.org/discussion-forums/forum/group-management-tool/