Personalized Whiteboards

Most of you have thought about personalized white boards, and I have thought about them as well. So this past year I decided I was going to make the plunge. I was needing a new way to assess my students every day for retention, but I didn't really know how or what I needed to do. In a traditional classroom it is difficult to know if every child is getting what you are teaching. There is always the one student who is always willing to answer the question, and you do have students that will answer if you call on them. I just needed a way to reach all my students. So one day my wife had looked on Pinterest and found some ideas, and the personalized white board really stuck out to me.  I purchased a classroom set of thirty from Amazon.com for around $30 that is around a dollar a board. I went with these due to the cost, and as a teacher we all know how much we spend in our own money every year.

 I took this year to see how my students would respond to the boards. I teach high school juniors and introducing something like this could be very tricky. They might feel that this is very elementary or just might not like doing it because it doesn't look cool. These were some of the issues I had come in contact with when I introduced them. Once I assured them this will benefit them they were more willing to use them.  I used the white boards as a way to assess my student's almost everyday. This gave me a great ability to see who was learning and what they did know. This also allows myself to change the way I teach while throughout the lesson. There were times I would go without using the boards to see if there is a difference in the learning. Students would not seem to be interested when we didn't use them, I feel they felt they could be invisible again if they didn't use them. I can assure you this does make students more accountable throughout the lesson and scores were higher when I used the boards than when I didn't.

 I do highly recommend if you can afford whiteboards to use them. These are great tools you can use everyday no matter what subject you teach. I have talked to some of the math teachers in my school and they have considered using this in their classroom as well. I hope you all enjoy the insights I have come across and I hope these will help make decisions for your classroom.

Here is a link where I found my whiteboards.  http://www.amazon.com/NEOPlex-Student-Laptop-Erase-Marker/dp/B001EW9I4W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1371149616&sr=8-4&keywords=personal+whiteboard 

Remind 101

As most of you all know I have not been writing about my goings on lately, or reviewing an app for the iPad. Part of it is my changing of subjects and part of it is laziness. I hope most of you most of you all will understand. Especially if you are a teacher trying to do all new lessons ready while want to write.

            Most of you all know I love technology and one of my newest favorite websites/ apps for all devices is the remind 101 app. This service is free, and which teacher doesn't like free. What is wonderful about this service is the students or parents do not have direct access to your phone number. As a teacher of high school students this is a great advantage. This will allow you to keep your students or parents up to date with you feeling you are getting to close to your students.

            How does it work?

            When you sign up for remind 101 you are assigned a phone number and a log in code such as this

           

This will allow all of the students to subscribe to your text messages. The ease of use with this product is great. If you can type a message you can use this. You can also organize the subscriptions to classes. I teach two different subjects so this feature works out amazingly.

Remind 101 only works if the students will subscribe. Even though I have haven’t had 100% participation from this program, I do have around 98%. When I presented this to my students the majority of them were really open to this idea. We have 7 class periods at out school and it is hard for all of our students to remember all of their assignments or if they are going to have a test tomorrow. Remind 101 makes it easy for you and your students to keep up with your class’s entire goings on.

I have noticed the student’s who have received the text messages have performed a lot better on tests and other assignments than the ones who do not have it. This gives them the nudge they need in order for them to study.

            I have fallen in love with this service, the guys at remind 101 have hit a home run. I highly recommend Remind 101 for anyone who is a teacher. I think you will find it very helpful with your classroom.

Back again

Hello again everyone it has been such a long time since something has been posted on my blog. I hope you all will forgive me for not posting. I will try and update the page as much as I possibly can. I due tend to change the layout a little and will be bringing more insight to just teaching than just teaching and tech.


Jacob Dunn