Social Networking/LinkedIn

In high school, students should begin to start thinking about their career paths and developing relationships and rapport with people in industries that interest them. As a counselor, it would be my responsibility to help students understand how to make these connections and empower them to find out more about their future careers—the daily realities of the job.

Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, can provide students with access to industry professionals and insight into how business connections are made. As a counselor, I will inform students of how important personal connections are when exploring career possibilities and job hunting, as well as how important a professional online presence is when making first impressions.

By properly utilizing LinkedIn, students can create a professional online presence that provides potential employers with vital information about a student. Students can then begin to add “connections” as they meet business contacts and thus start developing their professional networking group. Students can add experience and skill sets to their profile as they gain more experience, making it a fluid and ever-evolving networking tool.

The downside of sites like LinkedIn is that students could be easily discouraged by the lack of connections that can be made at this stage of their careers/life. Industry professionals might be leery of accepting connections of high school students they do not know. To mitigate this disappointment, counselors should prepare students for this potential challenge and help them make introductions and connections as much as possible.

For an example, my own linked in site is located at:http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=16275865&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro

Webcasting

As a guidance counselor, it is our responsibility to help every student succeed. This means that students who are experiencing long absences due to extenuating circumstances (such as medical or family issues), need extended processing time or who just need additional instructional resources, can easily fall behind in school. However, by exploring the use of technology such as Webcasting, students and their parents would be able to view or review valuable classroom instruction on-demand.

English as a Second Language Students (ESL) or students with learning difficulties would greatly benefit by this program as they would be able to really take their time to review lessons at their own speed of comprehension.

A site such as TeacherTube (www.teachertube.com) is a free resource that teachers can use to upload instructional videos that students can view at home. With the proper communication between teachers, counselors, administrators and parents, students can have a fluid and flexible resource available at their fingertips.

With Webcasting, teachers are not limited to recording only traditional instruction, they can get their creative juices flowing by developing fun and original lessons that can supplement any lesson—providing students a new a exiting medium in which to learn.

Possible challenges that could arise with this technology is an issue of fairness. If only a handful of teachers use Webcasting, is it fair that only students in their classes get this additional resource—especially if certain students in other classes would greatly benefit from this technology? If all teachers were then required to have a Webcasting component to their class, is it fair to ask teachers to add yet another item to their already overwhelming job description?

After reviewing several samples of teacher Webcasts, here are a couple of examples that would fit well in and out of the classroom:

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=24266&title=Mr_Duey___Fractions_Official_Video

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=145&title=Literature_Circles