Category: School Counsellors School Counselling

Future School Counsellors … If I Can You Can Too

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Technology is a very important part of students lives today and will be even more prevalent in the future. School Counsellors can find a way to incorporate exciting new practices into their School Counselling programs. These changes can inspire not only their students , but the School Counsellors themselves.

IF I CAN YOU CAN TOO

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.

School Counsellor chat schedule

  • 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.

University of Regina President Vianne Timmons saying School Counsellors Change and Save Lives

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.

The most rewarding part of my job as a School Counsellor

  • 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   :

  1.  Post Secondary Planning
  2.  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.

Welcome grade 10’s

There Is More To me Than PSA

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.

Ten Things You Should Stop Doing

#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.

  1. SCOPE blog
  2. Blog roll of School Counselors

#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:

  1. Connecting with School Counsellors
  2. Mental Health in High School A Collaborative Project

One Tool At A Time Google Drive and Forms

#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.

The Future of School Counselling Google Hangout

Post ETMOOC Google Hangout

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.

35 years in Education The Passion Continues

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I cannot believe I started teaching thirty five years ago. I have to say I am as passionate about my profession and even more so because of all the learning that has taken place over all these years. I am so grateful to learn with and from students , other educators , friends , my husband and our children.

I love what I do and I let students know that. I feel it is extremely important to care about what you do and remain passionate . If you are no longer passionate about being an educator or School Counsellor it is time to change as it is a major disservice to the students we serve. I plan on retiring (not now),but with passion for a profession that fulfills and will always hold a special place in my heart!

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Being a lifelong learner has served me well. I feel I still have sooooooo much to learn. Thanks to Twitter and my PLN especially those in #etmooc  #SCCrowd  and #scchat, I continue to learn and grow every day. It has actually given me new ways to do what I love to do.

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The use of technology has allowed me and our Student Services Team to share ideas and resources with the whole school.

Here is our Welcome To Student Services Smore.

We love to collaborate at BCHS and Peter Damen one of our School Counsellors took the lead in creating  a Post Secondary Planning livebinder to assist students with finding academic information. It is fantastic.

Erin Luong (another School Counsellor at BCHS ) and I are working on this Personal Wellness livebinder to assist students in finding resources related to wellbeing and mental health. We will eventually create a live binder just for parents. I am so fortunate to work with a School Counsellor @ehordyskiluong who loves using tech as much as I do.

I so look forward to this school year as I know I will find the extraordinary in the ordinary days and remind myself to be grateful for each and every day.

Please check out our student wellness team latest PSA There Is More To Me Than:

If you are looking to read any books this year try these two. Have a phenomenal year . I look forward to connecting and collaborating with you!

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You can find me @sspellmancann on twitter.

School Counselling in 30 #SCin30

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A Haiku Deck #SCin30

Twitter and great educators often inspire new ideas and this time it was no exception.  I came upon a tweet by George Couros a while back, and for those School Counsellors who don’t know @gcouros ,  he is a Principal , Educator , leader , inspiration and thought provoker. Really , he is a Canadian educator, an everyday person who cares.

I loved reading his blog post on his new project #EDUin30 it is such a fabulous idea. You and I can now share 30 second videos on twitter by simply taking our phone, videoing our thoughts and sharing them on twitter in a tweet.

Need a few great examples. Check them out here.

I know videoing yourself is not an easy thing to do as I did this in a vlogging project called #openspokes for a couple of years . Believe me putting myself out there wasn’t easy at first. It definitely made me reach outside my comfort zone.  Making a video for longer that 30 seconds is a big commitment, but sharing our thoughts in 30 seconds is something we could all most likely sustain. So I invite all School Counsellors from around the world to share , to learn, to grow and to collaborate with me in this project . I am excited to get started and would be so honoured if you would join me on this journey.

For those of you with an iPhone here is the step by step guide

1) Go to your camera – move your cursor over to video .

2) Press the big red dot and Press play answering your question. You can see my sample below only I uploaded to youtube this time.

3) Go to twitter.  Press the feather at the top as if you were writing a post.

4) Then below go to your camera and post your video. As long as it is less than 30 seconds it will post directly to twitter.

5) Voila YOU DID IT! Don’t forget to add the two hash tags #SCin30 and #SCin30 Q1 etc. . It’s really that easy.

6) Thanks for sharing and I look forward to posting and learning with you.

School Counsellor in 30. #SCin30.

Instead of breaking the hashtag as #EDUin 30 does I prefer to use weeks. I thought it would work if we do it in questions. Question 1  : #SCin30Q1

Why did you become a School Counsellor? #SCin30Q1, so when you post your first video and I so look forward to it please post to two hastags #SCin30 and #SCin30Q1 or on whatever question we are on at the time of posting.

I would also love if you would add some questions you would like to see in this collaborative google doc.

My goal is to get at least 100 questions that we all collaborate on and answer related to School Counselling and a School Counsellors unique perspective . I would also encourage School Counsellor educators and School Counselling students to join in.

WHY DO THIS?

As George said to make reflection a part of our work. I hope this will also help us to inspire each other and create new ideas. As School Counsellors many of you feel isolated as you often work alone in your schools without other School Counsellors to bounce ideas off of. This is another way to share that can help us to feel connected, be better , do better and most importantly find ways to help our students. I think there are many great things that can happen as a result of sharing this way. Let’s see what happens? Won’t YOU join me?.

Thank you George for doing what you do and inspiring educators to make a difference. Grateful that you do!

Thanks for spreading the word!