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

A paperless guidance office would change my role from that of a paperpusher to one of facilitator of learning, a guide on the side as students and parents take in and interact with the information we have for them.  If the guidance office went paperless, we would save a ton of money that could be used for other services.  There is no reason why parents and students could not register for school online.  Any communications with the school, can be done on email or through our Blackboard Internet system.  Parent permission slips for many things can be done online: registration for gifted testing, changes in class schedules, permission for group or individual counseling.  Invites for special events can be posted online.   Other areas of information that can be put online are:  Developmental guidance lessons, parenting strategies, Strengthening Families pod or video casts, Family Home Evening ideas, things to do with your at-risk students, summer activities, teenage job leads, college and  career search links, surveys, and resource information for parents, teachers, and students.  Information would be out to parents, students and staff in a more timely manner and feedback would be received quicker. 

Students who interact with guidance curriculum on Wikis and Blogs will retain more information than if they just sat and listed to a counselor lecture.   Learning would be measured by choices the students make as they apply guidance curriculum principles.  The students would create a learning community that would enrich their learning as they apply what they learned and write about the results of their choices,and the ideas they have about those results.   I would feel more comfortable as a guidance counselor if I knew that I was reaching all my staff, students and parents with the correct guidance information if we communicated with Web 2.0 technology tools instead of paper.  Web 2.0 tools facilitate a two-way communicationn in a much more user friendly way. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Guidance Counseling

Skypecasts Academic Potential  is out there promoting Skype and Skypecasts in education.  Edutechie.com facilitated a Skypecast recently to talk to others about using Skype in Education.  It did not work as well as he would have liked.  When too many people try to join the chat at the same time you have chaos and that is what he had during the first few minutes.  When he used his moderator tools, things calmed down and were more orderly.  Skypecasting takes practice, organization, and dedication.  It is a good place for people to practice talking to others from foreign countries if they want to improve their language skills.  I think Skype can be very useful for families, small work groups, and college study groups.  I am not sure I would ever use it for the classroom, though because I think there are easier ways to accomplish the same goal.  In the future, I think I would use AOL IM Video to connect with other educators and students.  It is more user friendly and you can see the people you are talking to quite easily.  Whatever you decide to use, using a real-time connection helps build relationships, helps turn work around faster, and keeps people motivated because they have fun using it. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Web 2.0

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/4917/studentsoncomputersgl3.jpg

I agree with the authors of the Wikispace bcejan08pls  who stated, “Connectivism, a learning theory developed by Siemens, supports the students of today’s society.” My students are online daily making connectings to other students in our district through Web 2.0 social networking sites.  They share knowledge relating to the processes, products, and content of their learning.  Because of their sharing they are growing more than they could do alone.   No longer to students learn alone, they are living in a Web 2.0 technology age and to keep up, they must join communities of learning using Web 2.0 technology. 

Tags: bcejan08pls, Connectivism, 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

Flickr photos can be used as great discussion starters in the guidance office.  Students in small groups can find and share photos: showing how they are feeling, demonstrating goals they have, or activities they want to do.  Flickr photos can also be used to illustrate topics in PowerPoint presentations for parents, staff, or students.

 Another great site that can help when working with photos is imageshack.us .  I downloaded my Leadership image onto my computer and converted it on this system to a URL so I could add it to this blog.  Images can be easily resized on this site to make them easier to upload on the web or for email.

 Look for my Flickr photo Leadership below:

Tags: bcejan08pls, guidance

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