SchoolCounselor.com eNewsletter #120

July 31, 2010

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

2010-2011 On Site Professional Development Training Brochure

http://bit.ly/sabella-training

Must See Videos

New videos have been added since the last issue:

What is Google Voice?

Protecting Children from Harmful Online Content

Game of Hope

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

IPST - 3D Augmented Reality Books

Parenting Advice- Dr. Russell Sabella (Getting Kids Unplugged and Outside)

Amazing Fire Animation!
 

More must see videos at http://counselingvideos.blogspot.com/

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TIPS AND TRICKS

Sabella’s Helpful Handouts for Technology in Counseling

One page table of my most accessed Handouts in Counseling and Technology including Safety and Security.

http://bit.ly/tech-handouts
 

and also see Sabella’s Top Ten Technology Tools

http://bit.ly/sabella-topten

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LastPass

Never forget a password again and log into your sites with a single mouse click. LastPass is a password manager that makes web browsing easier and more secure. I just started using this and life is much easier.

http://lastpass.com/

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timeEdition is targeted at all users in a computer workplace who value detailed documentation of their working hours, whether they use it for customer billing or for monitoring the duration of individual projects. I wonder if this would be helpful for school counseling time and task analysis. You can break down your work by multiple clients, projects and tasks. You can just record elapsed time. Or you can set a time limit on specific tasks. It will warn you when your time is up.

http://www.timeedition.com/

Also see EZANALYZE TimeTracker

http://www.ezanalyze.com/tracktime/

... and a column about other tracking software

http://bit.ly/tracking-software

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AblieBits: Merge Tables Wizard for Microsoft® Excel®

Just imagine this: you have two Microsoft Excel worksheets with common columns e.g. personal number and name. You want to merge them into one table or update the information in your main spreadsheet. If you decide to do it manually, you will have to go through each row in the main spreadsheet to identify the matching row on the second spreadsheet. After that you will spend even more time on updating the selected rows or on adding some columns from the lookup table to the main list.

http://www.ablebits.com/excel-lookup-tables/

Also see http://www.ezanalyze.com/help/amalgamate.htm

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Make YouTube Jump Through Hoops

Make a YouTube video start at your favorite part, default to high-def playback, leave out related videos, and more.

http://lm.pcworld.com/t/1082747/5468364/94812/0/
 

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Google Voice now available in the U.S.

A little over a year ago, Google introduced Google Voice as an invitation-only service. Now anyone in the U.S. can sign up to get one number to ring all their phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and texting within the U.S. and Canada, and more. I have one and I absolutely love it. Even allows you to connect Google voice mail to your cell phone so everything is in one place.

http://google.com/voice

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Save a Chart as a Chart Template

Applies to: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007

To reuse a favorite chart that you customized to meet your needs, you can save that chart as a chart template (*.crtx) in the charts template folder. A chart template that you create is in reality a custom chart type that you can apply like any other chart type. Instead of re-creating the chart, you can apply the chart template to the worksheet data when you create a new chart. You can also change the chart type of an existing chart by applying a chart template.

http://bit.ly/c6tm4t

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Multimedia Results Reports

I have been advocating for a brief (2 minute) narrated, multimedia, self advancing PowerPoint that includes charts. You can download a handout for this at http://bit.ly/5dKxbd and see a sample I made up at http://bit.ly/5SjVq3. The advantages are that, once all confidential information is removed, you can easily distribute the report to all stake holders including parents, Board members, Teachers, and Parents. Another advantages is that if the whole school district does them, you could potentially search and seek particular reports that others are doing by keyword but also by words that are included inside the report. I think it's also much more fun to watch instead of reading a paper report. The video at http://bit.ly/5fsazg may also be helpful (Using PowerPoint and PhotoStory3 to create a Narrated Presentation)
 

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PDF Conversion with Google Docs

Now Google Docs allows you to convert your PDF files and images with text to editable documents. When uploading a PDF or image to Google Docs, choose the following option: “Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents.” Google Docs will extract the text. Results may vary depending on the quality of the PDF or image; the better the image quality, the better the results. Keep in mind Google Docs will only extract up to 25 megabytes worth of text from a PDF or image, so if you happen to have a PDF that’s especially long, you may only see the first 10 pages or so converted to text.

Source: Broncobytes
 

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Podcast with ASCA conference keynote speaker Sonia Manzano, known to millions as “Maria” from Sesame Street http://bit.ly/bvO6Oh

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Google: Improve Your Search Experience

In addition to providing easy access to billions of web pages, Google has many special features to help you to find exactly what you're looking for. Visit this site to learn more.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html

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Google Calendar Sync automatically synchronizes events in your calendars. So just enter them once, and they show up in both places. You also have the choice of synching events only from your Google Calendar to Outlook, and vice versa. So, for example, if you use Outlook for personal events, and don't want to share them with co-workers, but you do want all Google Calendar events in your Outlook calendar, you can do that.

http://bit.ly/bsS5HT.

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How to Make a Visual Resume with PowerPoint in 3 Steps & Stand Out from the Crowd http://bit.ly/aSMLVE

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WORTHY WEBSITES AND SOFTWARE

Helpguide

Source: The Scout Report -- July 2, 2010

The mission of the Helpguide website is "to help people understand, prevent, and resolve many of life's challenges." The site was launched in 1999, and the team of experts who write the articles and updates on the site include persons with a psychology background and people working in the field of holistic medicine. On the homepage, visitors will find a list of fifteen different topics, ranging from "Emotional Health" to "Sleep". In each area, visitors can find short articles that provide suggestions on the topics, along with selected web resources for additional information. Moving on, visitors can click on the "Newsletter' to sign up for their electronic newsletter, which covers handling stress, self-injury in young adults, and teen depression, among other topics. [KMG]

http://www.helpguide.org/

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Introduction to Social Media

This resource looks at the key social media technologies and tools and how they can be used for learning and performance enhancement. You can dip in and out of sections and pages as desired. Use the Contents link at the TOP of each page to return here, and the use the section link to return the section main page.

http://c4lpt.co.uk/academy/ism/index.html

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Page Navigation in Google Forms

Google announced this week that they expanded their logic branching capabilities in Google forms. Previously, a form creator had to add an extensive amount of multiple choice questions to the form to ensure that respondents were directed to the correct pages of the form. Form creators can now use a simpler page navigation feature to direct respondents to relevant pages regardless of their answers. Instead of using “dummy” multiple choice questions, form creators can now use “Go to page based on answer” multiple choice questions in conjunction with the new page navigation capabilities to make a simple, easy-to-follow form.

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/page-navigation-in-google-forms.html
 

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GoalHappy is a FREE goal setting application that will help you to make positive changes in your life by allowing you to track your progress towards your goals, and share that progress with friends to get further motivation and support.

http://www.goalhappy.com/

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SpeedDate Quickly Adds Events to Google Calendar, Automatically Fills Event Details

http://lifehacker.com/5568838/speeddate-auto-fills-google-calendar-details

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Vertex42™ is a leading provider of Excel templates, financial calculators, and calendars. We also host The Excel Nexus - The ultimate directory of 3rd-party Microsoft Excel® resources, including add-ins, templates, tutorials, and consulting services.

http://www.vertex42.com/

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LookInMyPC generates a complete, comprehensive system profile that includes information on all installed hardware and software. Additionally it provides system diagnostic information such as details on running processes, installed services, startup programs, Windows updates and hot fixes, active network and Internet connections, TCP/IP port usage, event log detail, and much more.

http://www.lookinmypc.com/

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TweetEmbed is a small, lightweight and dynamic tool that's designed to integrate the powerful social tools of today and integrate it with the ability to integrate these tools into other applications and services with lightning fast delegation and cache.

http://www.ferple.com/projects/tweetembed/index.html

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Online-Convert

Convert media files online from one format into another. I found it when I was trying to find a way to convert an electronic book in epub format into something that my Kindle 2 can read (mobi). It worked great. If you don’t have an e-book reader, you can convert the e-books to PDF.

http://www.online-convert.com/

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OCRonline

Convert scanned document to text file

http://www.ocronline.com/

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Wallwisher is an Internet application that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily.

http://www.wallwisher.com/

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JUST FOR FUN

Secrets to Saving Money When Booking Trips Online

There are travel offers galore online, but finding the real bargains can be hard work. Kim shows you how to find the best deals to save big on your next vacation.

Watch the video

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YouTube - How To Beat The Claw Game

http://bit.ly/cZUcRg

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Desktop Nexus

High-quality desktop backgrounds.

http://www.desktopnexus.com/

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161 of the Best Videos on YouTube

http://mashable.com/2010/07/03/best-videos-youtube/

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Use Google as a Sunrise and Sunset Calculator

Source: digital inspiration

Here’s another undocumented feature of Google that most of us are probably unaware of. You can use Google web search to quickly find the time of sunrise and sunset for nearly every city in the world using the syntax “sunrise <city name>” and “sunset <city name>” respectively. For instance, a query like sunrise Delhi will show you an approximate time when the sun will appear next in the Indian capital while sunset London will display the time when the sun is likely to disappear from London – all times are mentioned in the local time zone. Other than Google, you can also find detailed information about the sunrise and sunset times of various cities using Wolfram Alpha. You can also use zip codes instead of city names.

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Pick&Zip is a totally free online tool that will allow you downloading pictures from Facebook in a single zip or pdf file.

http://picknzip.com/

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Sabella & Associates, LLC, 4922 SW 26^th PL, Cape Coral, FL 33914

Sabella@Schoolcounselor.com