Teaching and Guidance Counseling

Have you every been in a situation where you needed one of your PowerPoints but did not have it with you? I have. Being in three buildings as a guidance counselor each week, I found it a challenge to always remember what to bring with me. Slideshare solved my problem. With the use of slideshare your PowerPoints are stored on the Web and you can use them anywhere you have a computer with an internet connection. You can open a free account, upload your PowerPoint, and mark it private or public.

Tags: bcejan08pls, Instructional Strategies, Slideshare, Web 2.0

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.

Tags: beejan08pls, Guidance Counseling, Instructional Strategies, Web 2.0

Guidance Counselors should make Podcasting part of their approach to developmental guidance counseling.  The National Standards for School Counseling can give you the framework you need to start your developmental guidance program.  The standards contain a multitude of topics that you can use in your Podcasting.  These Podcasts need to be timely, pertinant, interesting, concise and show that you know your audience  (5 to 10 minutes at the maximum). 

Ideas for Guidance Podcasting include:

• Students telling their experiences and advice for transitioning to a new school or grade level.

• Guidance Counselors recording interviews with students about Time Management, Study Skills and Test Taking Strategies.

• Guidance Counselors recording the upcoming calendar of college speakers, standardized tests, or other guidance activities.

• Guidance Counselors giving strategies for dealing with stress, decision making, goal setting, implementing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, and bullying.  bullying.   CAS007 - Bullying: Intervention Strategies for the Victim and Bully w/ Dr.  Walter B. Roberts.  Airdate 2/16/2006.   I would recommend using this Podcast in staff development or with students in small group or individual counseling as you work with the bullies, bystanders, or the targets.   

• Guidance Counselors recording presentations for students or parents who could not attend (this may need to be longer than the 5-10 minutes maximum-it depends on the content and who the presenter is).

 The easiest way to begin is to create a podcast or vodcast (video podcast) of  a presentation or topic you have already worked with for years.   Check out Podcasts for Educators, Schools and Colleges for help getting started.    The Counselor’s Podcast™, a service of the Naviance Network™, features leading voices from the  school counseling community speaking on topics of professional interest.  The CounselorAudioSourse.net is another great site for examples of  School Counselor Podcasting. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Bullying, Guidance Counseling, Parenting Teens, Podcsting

As part of our unit on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, we are setting up a Wiki site on our in district Blackboard.   Working on a Wiki for the BCE PLS graduate course, inspired me to get my students to work on a Wiki as we put together our interactive multimedia project on the 7 Habits.  Creating a Wiki as a group has many challenges:  Timing, who does what, how much latitude to take as you make updates to someone else’s submission, how far to go in initiating new pages, etc.   I learned that anyone can make changes and that if you do not like them you can discuss it in the discussion page.  I also was happy to learn about restoring previous pages if you make a mistake to the page you are working on.  Wiki’s are not as overwhelming as I thought when I first looked at it this week.  Practice makes things go smoother. 

I was surprised last Saturday when I brought up Web 2.0 technology at the lunch table with other SAT proctors.  They were all resistent to the new additions to the district Blackboard page because they saw  having to Wiki and Blog as a burden instead of a help.  More training needs to be done so that they and others feel comfortable and move forward in their use of Wiki’s and Blogs.  My response is always to ask for more staff development classes.  We are actually, on Tuesday,  having a class that will teach district staff about Wiki’s and Blogs that can be done within our Blackboard system.   I plan to attend and learn as much as possible. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Guidance Counseling, school counseling

Podcasts for Transforming Teaching Through Technology

http://t4.jordan.k12.ut.us/t4/content/category/6/68/58/