At the beginning of the summer, teachers look down at their professional development list. I like most wondered what benefit I would have from the training that I will receive. This summer I had the privilege to meet Larry Bell. Larry is a thirty year plus veteran teacher. Larry still educates children, but not in the classroom. Larry has taken his talents of teaching to the teachers and empowered teachers to strive for the success of every student. One of my favorite quotes Larry said during the training was “On your worst day on the job, you are still some child’s best hope.” Larry emphasized the importance of making connections with your students as well as his “12 Powerful Words” and UNRA(A)VEL. More about these later. I have always been a person who understands how connecting with your students makes a huge difference. I love how he uses his “7,3,1” method during class time, seven times during class praise your students, three times during class brag on your students and one time during class NEVER accept their excuses but do it lovingly. Larry made a lasting effect on me; his message was assuring I was still doing it right by my children.

Larry Bell and his “12 Powerful Words” are exactly what it says. These twelve words are words can be found on state test questions or ACT/SAT questions. Your students might have heard these before, but they may have not totally understood the meaning. Question? How many times have you given a test question to a student and they not answer it correctly, but if you tell them what the question is wanting they can answer you every time. By training a student with these words, they will have a better understanding of what the question is asking. This strategy will help the student perform on the test better. Some of these words are: evaluate, infer, analyze, compare, contrast, etc… These words may feel like they are simple to understand although teachers are college educated and have heard and used these words a few times in their years. Our students are not, with some of their backgrounds we are happy they are just making it to school. The “12 Powerful Words” help even the playing field for our students on testing questions.

Larry Also unraveled to us UNRA(A)VEL a reading and writing strategy for students. By using the acronym, students can look at the passage and understand the writers point he/she is trying to get across. With more of our testing “common core” centered it is important that the student understands how to pull the information out of the text and answer the questions given.

This year my school has bought into the “12 Powerful words” and UNRA(A)VEL. We hope these strategies will help our students perform better on their state mandated tests, and also help them as they continue their education. I am very thankful of my school district to bring Mr. Larry Bell to us this summer. He was such an inspiration to myself and other colleagues. Larry is scheduled also to spend some time with us this fall, which I can not wait for it again.

More information about Larry Bell and his passion towards students you can find them at
http://www.larry-bell.com Also, if you would like to know more from my perspective you can contact me via twitter @jacobdunn

Most people in the education world have now heard of the acronym PLC. PLC stands for Professional Learning Community, and its design is to help teachers collaborate with other teachers who teach the same grade level or the same subject. This is a magnificent way for teachers to share ideas and teaching strategies with other teachers to better their teachings. We have started PLC’s in our school district this year and I do enjoy them. My fellow social studies teachers can talk about what goes well in our class and see what is going well in theirs. This is a great way to have ideas bounced off different people to see if they have tried a certain teaching style or not

You probably know about Twitter but they really don’t know what it is or how it is used. Twitter is considered a micro-blogging site where you are given 140 characters to let your “followers” know what you are doing. Some people still use it to inform about their day to day lives but others have chose to use Twitter as a content creation/consumption media. Twitter has turned into the ultimate news source for many people including myself. I use this as my primary news source, because people are breaking news as it happens instead of waiting for a newscast. It can also be used for information I love how people share blogs and other information about their trade or interests.

How can Twitter be used as a PLC? With Twitter you can get tons of information about education, and what is going on in education. So how do you get this info? You need to sign up, then at the top of the screen click on “who to follow”. Since this is an EDtech blog, I would suggest you follow someone in the education field. Just type in Education in the search and you will find quite a few to follow such as @usnewseducation or @ED_outreach. To have a PLC, you will need people for ideas, feedback and support. Some of the people I follow are @perrywiseman, @dianeravitch, or @teachpaperless. These people, I have found very valuable to my online PLC by the information they share, and there is a wealth of it. If you want to expand your knowledge about any subject, I would suggest you use Twitter and “follow” on.

Most of you have read my blog post about my purchasing the personalized white boards. I am please to let you know that after two years of using so my students have shown much improvement. Last year I was able to have student growth at the top of my department. I enjoy using these and it is a great questioning tool for your evaluations too.

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.

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

Show me allows you to draw on the screen and record your voice at the same time. It also has the ability take a photo that you have taken or have saved and can draw over it. I have used this in my class to describe how the rain shadow effect works, and other geography related topics. Not only can you save your own videos and show them to your students, you can share your videos with others on the show me website. Show Me is basically an on demand learning service. I recommend the show me app for all teachers who have an iPad this will help you give your students a better visual of the topics you have discussed. With show me it is a great tool that you can use to educate your students or other people around the world with just your iPad.
Here is a basic video on how it works.

Today we have started out projects for the semester exam. Instead of testing the students with a formal assessment I thought it would be fun for the kids to research a country and instead of reporting on it, I decided they were going to make a commercial for it. Since most of my students do not have access to a video camera I will let them use a power point or make a brochure instead. Although some of my students are really excited about creating a video. Some have asked me about making a video over war torn Iraq and having a faux battle scene. I too am excited for them. Hopefully if they are willing I might put some on youtube for everyone to see. I will keep everyone posted.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45498776/

Hi all, I know it has been a while since I have posted last, but I am going to let you in on how I create a podcast for my classroom and hopefully you can too. First thing is to know what you want to podcast about. I podcast for my test reviews, this allows my students to listen to me while on the go, and we all know most of them have some sort of headphones or ear buds in their ears. So why not reach them right? Second you will need some sort of microphone so you can record your voice. A microphone can be relatively inexpensive or you can spend a lot of money on them. Since most of you that read this are teachers I understand that cost is a key point. The one I use is a Logitech USB microphone, I prefer the USB microphones because of the sound quality, but that is up to you. Next you will need some software and I prefer using Audacity, it is a free recording software that a lot of people use to record their podcasts. My students have come enjoy listening to my podcasts they say it gives them more confidence in what they need to know for the test. I am planning on expanding my podcasts to lectures and other things but I am keeping it simple as of now.