July 20, 2008

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Welcome to SchoolCounselor.com, an electronic newsletter designed to advance counselors' level of technological literacy, application, and integration. You will find practical solutions and answers to technology related problems, especially as they apply to your job as counselor. If you would like to share a tip or trick, or if you would like to ask a question, e-mail Russ Sabella at newsletter@schoolcounselor.com.

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Highlights from SchoolCounselor.com

Top 5 Training Topics for School Counselors

http://www.schoolcounselor.com/top5training.htm

Must See Videos

New videos added since the last issue.

http://www.schoolcounselor.com/videos/

Go directly to “Through My Eyes.” This video was made to present to the PTA and the faculty of my school. The principal said it was "TOO GRAPHIC" and that the agenda was already done for tonight's meeting. Well now I have decided to share my GRAPHIC life within the walls of her Middle School with others. Help make a difference by standing up and speaking out about school violence. I am allowing all comments to prove a point that there is cyber bullying as well. Victims portrayed in this video are not students of Udall Road School. Anyone may use this video as long as the creator Patrick Kohlmann is given credit for it.

http://www.schoolcounselor.com/videos/2008/06/through-my-eyes.html

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TIPS AND TRICKS

Microsoft Outlook 2007: Safe Senders and Junk E-Mail

In Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can add e-mail addresses to a safe recipients list. Messages received from safe recipients, and messages you send to them, will then never be treated as junk e-mail. Here’s how:

1. In an Outlook 2007 mail folder, right-click a message sent to you by the person you want to identify as a safe recipient.

2. Point to Junk E-mail, and then click Add Recipient to Safe Recipients List.

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Developing Your Own Website

by Lisa Saviñón M.Ed

SchoolCounselor.com eNewsletter Reader

My first discovery as a Professional School Counselor was the amount of research necessary to stay informed and truly meet student needs. During both Practicum and Internship, I had the chance to work with some pretty unique cases, and this meant several long nights of research. I became very familiar with the wonderful resources available to school counselors on the Internet. Armed with these new found resources and some amazing professors, I created a wealth of counseling files, and I gladly shared my files with other students and colleagues. I don't know how or even when, but eventually I became the go to person for several other counselors. Even as I write this now, I am assisting a good friend and great counselor design a crisis plan and safe room model. Soon, I decided to create a distribution list for counselors. Longtime members of the list will attest that I sent new and valuable resources found during the course of my latest research expedition, and I sent them often.

My web site came to mind when my distribution e-mails became longer and larger than several of my friends' accounts could accept. Obviously, I love my job and couldn't ever deny being a workaholic. Then it hit me, "Why not just build a site for all counselors, future counselors, families, teachers, and students to use?" My site allows me to post new finds for every group, and send an e-mail out informing them of the new arrivals. After trying several formats, I found teach-nology.com (http://www.teach-nology.com/). They offer easy to use free web sites; free was the key word for me. It has taken me many hours to create a site I am proud of. Recently, I decided to upgrade my site, adding more storage and capabilities. I think the $6.95 monthly fee is well worth it. If you are interested in creating your own site, teach-nology is user friendly and free. They have background themes, page templates, and plenty of room for storage. It is the best deal for educators, and I can assure you I did a great deal of research before making that statement.

The goal of my site is to share resources, so I welcome you to visit and send resources you would like me to post. The more the merrier! You can even join my distribution list from there and watch as we grow, with the latest additions of family and student sections.

Lisa's Counseling Site

http://lisasavinon.teach-nology.com/

Editor’s Note:

Congratulations on a fine looking and effectively functional website Lisa. I would like to add to Lisa’s great tip about developing an inexpensive yet quality website by letting you know about a couple of other options as well:

1.       Use Google applications to register your domain and have your own website. This costs $10 per year. You can get started by going to http://www.schoolcounselor.com/google/index.htm and click on Google Apps.

2.       Some counselors are using a free blog such as http://www.blogger.com, http://www.wordpress.com, or http://www.typepad.com.

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Video: Simple, Secure Group Websites

Google Sites makes it easy for anyone to create and manage simple, secure group websites. You can create and publish new pages with the click of a button, edit web pages like documents, and move content and pages around as you please. Information is stored securely online, and you decide who can edit or view the site. Google Sites is powerful enough for a company intranet, yet simple enough for a family website.

Watch the Video here.

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Microsoft Outlook 2007: Use Follow-ups on Sent E-Mail Messages

You're probably used to setting follow-up flags on e-mail messages in your Inbox. Until now, though, there wasn't much point setting follow-up flags on sent e-mail messages, because you rarely view your Sent Items folder. Yet it's often useful to set a follow-up flag on a sent e-mail message; for example, a sales e-mail message might warrant following up after a couple of days. It's now worth setting follow-up flags on sent e-mail messages, because they will appear on the To-Do Bar.

To do this:

1. Click the Follow Up flag on the Message tab of the Ribbon when writing your message.

2. Click the follow-up flag you want to use, or set a reminder for the e-mail's recipients.

You can customize the follow-up flag. When you set your flag, some basic options like Today and Tomorrow are instantly available, but if you click Custom, plenty more follow-up options appear. These include start and end times for the follow-up and required activities. All this information will appear on your To-Do Bar.

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Automatically start an Office program when you turn on your computer

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101749111033.aspx

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Microsoft Excel: How to Concatenate Text in a Spreadsheet

If you have text in two or more columns that you wish to join (concatenate) in another column, this can be easily done by creating a formula that utilizes the ampersand (&).

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Microsoft Word: How to change the default font setting in Word 2003

When you open a new blank document in Word 2003, Times New Roman is the font setting that displays as you start to type. You can easily change that setting for all future new blank documents to a font setting of your choice.

1. In the blank document, RIGHT click your mouse. The Font dialogue box will display.

2. In the Font dialogue box, make any changes you want, and that can include the font, its style and size, as well as color and effects, and that’s just on the Font tab.

3. Lower left Default button After you have made the changes you want, click on the Default button in the lower left corner of the Font dialogue box.

4. Click Yes to finish By clicking the Yes button on the pop-up, you will finish the action to make your newly chosen settings the default for each future blank document.

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Microsoft Word: How to add a Symbol into a Microsoft Word document

1. Open the document in Microsoft Word.

2. Click on Insert and from the drop down box, click on Symbol.

3. A Popup window with all kinds of symbols will appear.

4. To select the symbol, just click on it.

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Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks

When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: finding exact phrases matches using quotes like "so say we all" or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little input box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we're skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.

http://lifehacker.com/339474/top-10-obscure-google-search-tricks

If you like this, you should check out http://www.schoolcounselor.com/store/www-bootcamp.htm

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WORTHY WEBSITES AND SOFTWARE

Young People Who Rock is a weekly interview series focused on people under 30 -- from CEOs to entertainers to athletes to community and political leaders -- who are doing remarkable things. Nicole Lapin finds them and introduces them here by writing a weekly column that goes out in time for you to chime in before she interviews them Fridays on CNN.com Live.

http://ypwr.blogs.cnn.com/

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CyberBully Alert software is a tool for parents to equip their children with the ability to immediately communicate and document any threats or cyberbullying their children experience when online. This unique software is the result of expert opinions and research in the field of child development and internet safety. Experts agree that the best way to address cyberbullying and online threats is to immediately communicate the incident with an adult, as well as document what the threat is. CyberBully Alert is the only software which does this for parents and their children.

http://www.cyberbullyalert.com/

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GuardingKids.com

This web site supports Dr. Russell Sabella's work on educating children, parents, educators and other stake holders about the responsible use of technology. Included in these pages you will find helpful resources, lesson plans, a blog, links, and more. Russ's most recent book and workshops are primary resources for meeting this mission.

http://www.guardingkids.com/

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Foxit Reader for Windows (free download)

High on our list of the most annoying applications of all time is Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's slow, bloated and buggy and it often crashes some systems -- all of which can drive you insane. Foxit lets you read and even fill out PDF files, without touching Reader. This small and compact tool loads fast, won't hog RAM or system resources and won't crash your PC.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

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iSpring: Professional PPT to Flash Conversion

Now your presentation can turn from PowerPoint to Flash in one click and get all advantages of Flash format, such as compactness, easy distribution, high compatibility with all browsers and OSs. iSpring creates high quality Flash movies with vector representation of standard PowerPoint objects and keeps most of advanced PowerPoint features.

http://www.ispringsolutions.com/products/ispring_free.html

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Poll Authority

Need a poll for your website or blog and don't want to spend an arm and a leg on a custom solution? There's no expensive database to maintain, no developer to hire, and no complicated installation or set-up.

http://www.pollauthority.com/

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Ustream

Experience live video. In just minutes, you can broadcast and chat online with a global audience. Completely free, all it takes is a camera and Internet connection.

http://www.ustream.tv/

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Timetoast is an attractive new timeline app built on Abode's Flash and Flex. Do you like your timelines interactive and embeddable? Sure beats the last timeline we made (crayons and construction paper may have been involved)! This could be a good tool for bloggers who want to enhance a post with a detailed history of the topic, or for anyone in school who doesn't want to approach the aforementioned crayon method. What about using this with a student to describe his/her achievements as part of guidance and counseling.

http://www.timetoast.com/

Also see http://www.dipity.com/

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Data Boot Camp for School Counselors and Administrators - CD Russell A. Sabella, Ph.D. My newest CD is designed to help you become more proficient in using Microsoft Excel™ to make data an important part of your comprehensive school counseling program. From data-driven decision making, to monitoring progress, to reporting the positive impact you're having on kids -- this CD will demystify how it's done. With the Data Boot Camp for School Counselors and Administrators, what you see and hear on the videos is what you do. At your fingertips, you'll have access to 30 videos and lots of graphics, tips, tricks, and resourceful links. This straightforward step-by-step approach makes learning how to use Microsoft Excel™ (and a bit of PowerPoint™) as easy and convenient as watching television. Data Boot Camp will help school counseling students, practitioners, administrators, and counselor educators to more easily unlock the power of data so you can more effectively support student achievement. The content on the CD is equivalent to a full-day workshop in the computer lab! Visit and learn more about the contents of the CD and view a couple of sample videos (Remember, these samples may take a few moments to load because you are online. However, on the CD, this is not an issue because the videos are all located on the CD itself!). http://www.schoolcounselor.com/store/data-bootcamp.htm  $21.95 (FREE shipping) please allow 5-7 working days to arrive

JUST FOR FUN

Microsoft Office Templates for Summer

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101675311033.aspx

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Befunky is an online app that can turns your photographs into interesting cartoons without requiring any software. It’s a one-click process and yet the output is impressive. Just upload the image from your computer or capture one live using the webcam and the cartoon image is ready for download. You can either convert the picture into a black and white pencil sketch or a colored one.

http://www.befunky.com/

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Analogy Clock

http://www.jessonyip.com/analogy/media/analogy.swf

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Puzzle Farter... yeah we said fart

Developed by Pet Tomato the object of the game is simple. Get your character from door to door. It's just the way that he gets there is rather um... how should we put this... gas-tastic.

http://puzzlefarter.com/

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Dumpr is where you create marvellous photos to share with your friends. If you're no Photoshop guru, but you have fun applying different novelty filters to your pictures, you might like Dumpr. It's web-based, very simple to use, and has a pretty decent library of effects: sketch, Lomo, reflection and jigsaw puzzle, to name a few. You can upload photos from your own hard drive, or paste in URLs from some of the major photo hosting services, including Flickr and MySpace.

http://www.dumpr.net/

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Hulu

Watch video content, including complete television shows and excerpts of recent programs. View complete list of show alphabetically, by network, or by genre. A limited number of full-length movies are also available for viewing. Some content requires free registration for an account. Copyright is protected, and users of the site must be at least 13 years old. Founded by NBC Universal and News Corp, and operated independently.

http://www.hulu.com

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