Mar 01 2008
Service Delivery with Web 2.0 in the Guidance Office
Service Delivery from the Guidance Office is seeing big shifts:
Students in my middle schools are no longer just readers of or listens to information put out by guidance counselors. Within the password protected Blackboard site our District has set up for me for guidance curriculum, we have Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Videocasts, Email, Homepages, Calendars, Discussion Boards, Questions forums, Guidance PowerPoints, Articles, etc. Our students are able to interact with the information we post and with each other as they share their thoughts, ideas, and suggestions for application of guidance curriculum. Because we have more than one middle school, we are able to put students in touch with students from other buildings within a safe internet system. As students learn that our site is a Read/Write site we are getting more and more participation.
Right now I am doing a project with my 8th grade gifted students on Blackboard. We are using the message system, discussion board, Blogs, Wikis, course documents, etc to learn more about the 7 Habits and how they can be applied. I have three middle schools so my time in each building is limited. Being able to communicate with students through Blackboard enables me to better meet their needs. In the future, I can see doing group counseling through password protected Wikis or chat rooms within our system.
When I first started learning about Web 2.0 technology in the classroom, my brain hurt and I thought this would be over my head. After only a few weeks of training, I see Web 2.0 tools helping me provide great service my students more effectively. Using technology in the guidance office is a shift that my colleagues were originally surprised by and resistant to. Now after seeing what I am doing, they want a guidance page set up for our whole Guidance department so they can do what I am doing. The more students we reach out and help students and their families, the more other staff will see the usefulness of Web 2.0 technology in all areas of education.
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