How to implement technology in your school counseling program

That is right educators - technology is the future. There will be more and more demand for things like online courses, teacher blogs, video/pod casts, and parent portals. These things are all very scary for those who have been in education for any more than 10 years. Some will say it dehumanizes the education process-and to an extent you are right. However, with students as "connected" as ever, it is time for the teachers, administrators, and counselors to play catch up.

Updating to the times is a scary endeavor. It takes effort, time, and patience-almost like going back to school. Consider it professional development. Learning new skills can be painless and simple, but you need to know where to look and some basics of learning these new techniques. I hope to introduce you to a few of my favorite tools of the tech trade that I utilize in the school counseling field (but it can be applied to any educational setting or position).

First and foremost, let's find out what tools are needed most. I would suggest running a short survey of students and parents regarding what type of technological support would be most welcome. This can help focus your time and energy so you don't waste it on something that nobody will appreciate.

After you decide what technology to learn, you need to acquire said technology. Most things have a free alternative to any paid software. Granted, free software is sometimes missing key pieces or inferior, there are many adequate programs available to educators and free is good in the current economic climate. If you require hardware (laptops, tablet devices, microphones, etc.), try looking for grants or local support to help fund the purchases.

Here are a few websites that are helpful in looking for software:
www.download.com
www.filehippo.com

This free resource is part of the Google Suite of online applications. You (and anyone else you want to share with) will need a google login, but if you are not on Gmail yet - you should be. Google documents is a cloud-based (read: online only) document storage and collaboration tool.
Users can upload documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and design things like forms. They are all sharable and collaborative, so anyone a user invites to share can either read or have full access to update the "living" document.

Counselors can use things like the spreadsheet to help teachers take more responsibility for tracking student information such as students not meeting grades, collaborative field trip planning, sharing meeting notes, lesson plans, etc.

Another great tool is the forms tool. A simple, web-based survey/info gather form that has numerous applications and creates a spreadsheet with responses (as well as some breakdown info from the responses). I have used this for pre/post surveys, signup sheets, and interest forms.

www.Wix.com is a free website builder that can be utilized to create really sharp websites for any need. The process is simple, there is a step by step manual, and the applications are endless.

I created a personal portfolio for my school counseling job hunt in several hours and I have received many comments about how impressed people are with it. Naturally, I don't tell them it doesn't take very long to build or that I didn't "code" it all by hand.

I have seen several colleagues use it to develop their entire counseling website, a college application guide, and a parent help site to provide resources to reach their kids.

http://www.ezanalyze.com/

This program is developed by a counselor educator named Tim Poynton at Suffolk University. He created this Microsoft Excel add-in to help counselors track their time and work with data in a much simpler and straightforward way. I have found the TimeTracker to be of more helpful in everyday use. Both are a little bit more advanced than the other software I will speak of in this article, but there is a lot of supporting documentation that helps users setup and use the two programs.

One nice thing about TimeTracker is it fits with the ASCA National Model and produces quality reports that a counselor can use to support their program with their supervisors or school boards. It also provides a good snapshot of where you (or your department) is spending the majority of their time. One downside is that in order for the program to be effective, you will have to make it part of your daily regimen. It will not produce data without input, so you need to make it a priority to get the true results.

Powerpoint (or Keynote for the Mac Users) is a staple of education and business in current day. It is a valuable tool and used correctly, it can really enhance any sort of lesson or presentation. HOWEVER, many people have no clue how to correctly use and design their presentations. This leads to bored audiences, reading the slide, and a lower quality finished product.

Like anything, learning to create good powerpoints takes practice and effort. And the actual creating of the powerpoint is only half the journey. A counselor can have a perfect powerpoint, but royally screw up the presentation. Here are some general tips and handy websites/tools I have found helpful in the creation of quality presentations.

Tip #1: The powerpoint is a memory aid - not the meat of the presentation. If the majority of your presentation info is on your powerpoint, you are doing something wrong. Good presenters spend about 60% of their time speaking without using the slide and 40% referring to supporting documents or expanding on points from the given slide. Please PLEASE do not read directly from the slide.

Tip #2: If there are more than 3-5 sentences on the screen - you are doing something wrong. The slide is not the place for long winded definitions, court cases, or running records. Take your info and condense it to very short sentences or helpful memory aids to trigger the audience and your memory to talk about the next point. You can add more details to the notes page or on a separate handout, but do not waste peoples' time reading what they can read twice as fast as you speak.

Tip #3: Leave out the cute animations and sounds - they are not needed and typically detract from the quality of the presentation over all. A simple fade between slides is about as fancy as you should get (and keep the same animation throughout the presentation if you choose to use one). Along these lines, also choose a simple color scheme (and test its readability before presenting). Typically plain white background with black text looks best. You can add a little flair with some photos or background, but make it simple.

When searching for images or background, I use the following website: http://www.sxc.hu/ This website is a stock photo site with many free, high quality images. Search for things you may want to include in your presentation. A little tutorial on removing plain backgrounds in photoshop is easy to find on YouTube if you want to improve your presentation even more.

There are thousands (or more) great resources on the web that counselors, teachers, or administrators can use (usually free of charge) in their daily work. The nice thing is that most of it is already created and a teacher or counselor simply needs to fit it into their curriculum. I will point you to a few general resources that I enjoy using and have found safe.

A brief note about internet use, suggested programs, and just general good sense (I hope this is not new to you). Be careful of posting anything with personal or student information to any website. Websites are not guaranteed to be secure (even if they say they are). Second, try to use a decent web browser -- Internet Explorer, while typically the default school district browser, is not very secure nor use friendly. I would suggest using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. They are constantly being updated, provide useful extensions (worthy of another article all together), and are significantly more secure the IE.

Okay, now that we are all experts on how to use the internet safely - lets get cracking.

First resource that I want to share is the all powerful YouTube.com. Home of millions of user created videos and many that counselors can take full advantage of. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the majority of the content on the site, it is typically blocked by school district content blockers. There are ways around this, and a smart Google search can land you some options (downloading the video and playing from the hard drive is my favorite). So be aware that if you are planning a lesson from home, you may not have access to that awesome video you found when you get to school.

Second, SchoolTube.com. This site is much smaller than YouTube, however, it is optimized for use at schools and the content is much more educationally oriented. There are nice categories such as Math, Science, Green & Environment, and many others that you can explore. I also feel most school districts would be more open to letting this domain name through their firewall so teachers can access it. One great channel that I found for counselors is the ASCA Channel (http://www.schooltube.com/channel/schoolcounselor).

Third, college websites. Most (if not all) colleges now have a well-functioning website that is designed to attract future students. Most of the time, they have interactive tours, videos of current students and professors, and vast information about student life, majors, and other services the college provides. Help students find these websites (or have them help you) and it will open up new opportunities of exploration and knowledge. Encourage your students to find several other colleges that are close to what they desire and have them check out the website. Teachers can have students do college website reviews and start them thinking about their future. Any way we can get kids involved in researching their education, typically the better.

If anyone else has great websites, sound off in the comments or send me an email.

Dropbox is an excellent tool that syncs a folder on your desktop/laptop computers and the cloud (online storage) to keep the most up to date version live on your PC. It is free for 5GB of storage (plus you can earn more through referral or purchase a pro plan). 5GB is most likely more that any counselor will need if just saving notes. It integrates into windows and creates a folder just like My Documents that you can copy/paste/save/open files to and from. Very easy and I don't know what I would do with out it.

There is the issue of confidentiality and ensuring your data is secure (from prying eyes and/or in the case of litigation). You can encrypt your data (or parts of your data) within your dropbox and Lifehacker (a techie blog) has a great how-to on what program to use to encrypt and a step-by-step method of doing so. Worth a look.

http://lifehacker.com/5794486/how-to-add-a-second-layer-of-encryption-to-dropbox

(Shameless plug - by using the link below, you can help me increase my storage. Feel free to use it to help out and say thanks or download directly from the site).

http://db.tt/bhmrQbm

Many people are jumping on board the tablet train - while I have not yet, I can see some of the draw. There are wonderful Apps and tools that you can utilize to make your classroom lessons and presentations more streamlined and give you more freedom. I will quickly go over several Apps that I believe you should check out if you have an IPad.

Powerpoint Control:
(MyPoint PowerPoint Remote -- Free; Slideshow Remote -- $4.99, but with increased functionality)

A useful app that allows teachers to control and view their powerpoints from their IPad from anywhere in their classroom. This frees up the teacher or counselor to be more dynamic in the classroom, and we all know an active teacher maintains better classroom management than one tied to the powerpoint computer. The paid version also allows you see the current slide, the upcoming slide, and notes that you have written about the slide as well as move forward and backward in the slideshow. The free App is a little less comprehensive, only showing current slide and upcoming slides. The interface is also not as intuitive.

There is one caveat I need to mention about these Apps - they need access to Wi-Fi to work. If your school does not provide access to Wi-Fi and you have a 3G model, those will work as well, just watch your data.

Links to the two Apps:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mypoint-powerpoint-remote/id340815720?mt=8 -- Free

http://www.slideshowremote.com/ -- $4.99

So we briefly covered a few different software programs which I feel are invaluable to the counseling/educator profession. Naturally, there are many many others and I may update this article after having a chance to utilize more and more technology (while maintaining the human touch) to benefit the students and reach parents. The key thing to using technology in any setting is being creative, unique, and finding out what works for you and your caseload. If you are an ELD counselor, for example, the technology piece may not be as influential, but find out what is and go after it - but remember to do no harm.