Future School Counsellors … If I Can You Can Too
- Sep 27, 2015
- 6 min read
I’ve been asked by Dr. Chris Schimmel @doc_schimmel an outstanding Counselor Educator to present to future School Counsellors on the use of technology. I love technology and think it is essential to future School Counsellors. Why? Because it allows us to connect with students in their space as well as allows us an opportunity to connect to the whole school population. Of course there will always be a place and a space for meeting and connecting with students individually, but it is also extremely important to reach as many students as possible and that can be done through the use of technology.
Technology also allows us to develop a PLN with people from all around the world. In my opinion this is one of the best ways to connect with not only School Counsellors who are passionate, but also with other educators who use technology to assist them in improving and reflecting on what it is they do for students. Dr. Erin Mason @ecmmmason my friend is an amazing leader when it comes to School Counsellors utilizing and creating ideas with technology.
So, University of West Virginia Counseling students this blog post is for you. I look forward to meeting , connecting and sharing and helping you in the Google Hangout organized by your professor Dr. Chris Schimmel.
The rest of this blog will be about the resources I think School Counsellors can use that make a difference.
#1 is Twitter so I encourage you to get an account today. It will transform your life and the life of your future students if used properly. Twitter is where it all began for me and then ETMOOC changed the way I offered parts of my School Counselling program. A special thanks to Alec Couros @courosa Ed tech professor extraordinaire and social media expert at the University of Regina. You will want to follow him and his brother George @gcouros a leader and fabulous Administrator on twitter.
Advantages of twitter:
It allows for opportunities to connect, collaborate, share and learn from and with people from all over the world.
I have used Twitter and Google docs to collaborate with other School Counsellors and educators who have wanted to contribute to Mental Health in High School as well as many other projects.
Using the hashtags #SCCrowd and #scchat as well as some other great chats allows us to connect with School Counselling professionals who are more than willing to help us as we continue to work with and make a difference for students.
The instant anytime access allows me to get information or resources that I can utilize in an open manner which not only helps me , but may help others.
It also allows us a voice for reaching out to others to let them know that what we do matters.
This post has had 9,458 people who have seen it in two days. Social media can reach people quickly.
If you’d like to start to follow and share on #SCin30 you too can have a voice. We’d love to know what you think as a future School Counsellor. Pose a question and answer it. Then share and we can learn from you.
Twitter allows you as a School Counsellor to share and help other School Counsellors, School Counselling students and educators.
If you want to learn more about School Counsellors observe their twitter accounts. Please follow them using the hashtags above and you’ll get a good sense of how you too can be a positive digital citizen and model this for your future students.
Ask for help. Other School Counsellors and educators are always willing to help you. If you have questions or concerns please do not hesitate to ask.
One of the best ways you can find the best tech tools to use as a School Counsellor is to check out SCOPE School Counselor Online Professional Exchange. Spend some time there. It will be worth your time and effort.
#2 Haiku Deck As a School Counsellor you will have to give presentations or you may wish to share ideas or messages with students that you think are important. Haiku Deck @haikudeck is my number one go to app. It has a creative commons license built within the app that allows a visual experience that is like none other.
Below you can see some of my haiku decks that I have used to share with School Counsellors and students.
The power of social media to touch others is absolutely amazing. This simple @haikudeck on Who Matters? has had 79,769 views . One never knows the impact a simple gesture can have online and off.
#3 Livebinders I love to use livebinders to organize and share useful School Counselling information. At Bishop Carroll High School we use livebinders to share large amounts of important information with students in a single space.
Here are two of our livebinders co-created by our School Counselling team Erin Luong @ehordyskiluong , Peter Damen and I :
This Personal Wellness livebinder is a work in progress.
#4 Smore
There are so many benefits for using smores. You can find a few ideas here.
Here is our Welcome to Student Services smore. It is an excellent way to share information with your future students , parents and staff. Also it is an amazing tool for gathering ideas to present to students as you can see in our personal wellbeing livebinder section .
#5 iMovie / YouTube I use iMovie more and more to present to students information that I think will be helpful to them. Dean Shareski , a Canadian educator said once and it has stayed with me video trumps text, so I try to use video as much as possible to create information students can relate to and then upload the iMovie to YouTube. I do this all on my iPhone which makes things very easy for me.
Here are two iMovies , one I made and one our students made as part of our student led wellness team.
Here is one I made from haiku deck :
Ten Things You Should Stop Doing: Notice the attribution to Haiku Deck at the bottom of the movie which you should always do . Give attribution that is. That is where people can see where the pictures come from and who to attribute them to.
#6 Blogs
Blogs are a great tool to create, connect and learn from others. For me creating blogs still requires a great deal of effort as I am still learning, but today’s example is a great way of sharing information with others from far away. I started my blog in May of 2013. It has had 15,113 views from 105 countries.
#7 Google docs are an amazing way to collaborate. I collaborate with our students on our Wellness committee and our Who’s Frank? team. Here are two google docs that you can collaborate on and I hope you do:
#8 Pinterest is a fabulous way to collate information and gather information for future use. I love the visual aspect of pinterest.
Pinterest does indeed inspire creativity . I have used it for many things including creating School Counselling bulletin boards as well as for ideas for presentations.
#9 Google hangouts
Again, yet another great way to connect with School Counsellors and educators from across the world.
For more ideas of why technology is important for you check here.
You can see that I use multiple tools in multiple ways to help me do a variety of things that help not only School Counsellors , but students as well. Three years ago I did not know how to do any of this so … if I can you can too.