December 13, 2010

Ipad and Counseling??

IPad and Counseling

I received an iPad today to use as an added counseling tool. I was somewhat taken aback at the idea of using this “gadget” as a counseling tool. To be honest, I have never given much thought to the idea of integrating technology and counseling. But in reality technology is such an integral part of our lives so a marrying of the two should not be such a foreign idea.

It has been almost a week since I have had the ipad and it has been an interesting one. First to begin with, it is extremely user friendly especially if you own an iphone. It is like a really big iphone. Students walk in the office and they are immediately drawn to it. It really disarms students and gets them to open up and talk. Instead of just sitting at a table and talking --which for middle school students is no small task; you can engage a student in a game of air hockey while you discuss the student’s relationship with a father who is marginally involved in the student’s life.

There is something quite liberating about the access to information that the device gives you. You are no longer tied to a desktop in order to access information. For example, I was walking down the hall and saw a student standing outside a classroom, when I asked the student why he was outside the classroom, he reported that his teacher had asked him to leave the classroom. I was able to immediately access the Student Occurrences for this student. I showed him his occurrence reports and engaged him in a conversation about the behaviors that his teachers had documented in the reports. I didn't have to walk the student back to the office in order to access that information. It is like having an office on the go.

1 comment:

  1. This is so cool. We too at our school district are considering using the iPad in our Middle School Counseling dept. We need to come up with a rationale as to how using the iPad could help us in collecting formative student data which would ultimately help student's academic success. Do you have any experience in using it for that purpose?

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