The Portal to Learning: 'Steam for Schools' at your school

Portal 2 is coming to the classroom:

Valve, the creators of games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Portal, has launched it's "STEAM for SCHOOLS" program and I think it is something to check out! Valve has adapted its game delivery service, Steam, for use in the school environment and has its sights set on helping the future generations through using Portal 2 to develop critical thinking, spatial reasoning, and collaborative skills.

Students playing games to learn? Some may scoff at the idea and I feel that most districts will push back some at first, but have you ever seen a student buy a new game and master it by the end of the day? Valve and teachers supporting the initiative are optimistic that the Teach With Portals project will have the same results - creating a fun learning environment that increases student interest in the STEM fields.

What is this Portal 2?

When Valve created Portal and its successor, Portal 2 -- they stepped away from their successful, albeit typical, genre of shooter style games (which are significantly too violent for schools). Portal 2 teases the brain and is a puzzle based game - making users utilize a "gun" to create...portals to transport through each level of an abandoned subterranean factory to reach the surface. These portals allow you to move through the maze-like rooms using finesse and tactics to ensure you don't run off your target point (Physics: conservation of momentum - you come out of the portal with the speed and direction you enter it with).

It is more complex and there are details that would take a page to describe, but the general sense of the game is here. Odds are that at least several of your students already play Portal or Portal 2 for fun. A Valve press release in May 2012 reported that over 8 million copies of the games had shipped or been downloaded with Steam.

How is this educational?

When Valve started to think about working with educators, they focused on STEM skills. They recognized these skills as being of high value to students and allows teachers to make concepts in physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, problem-solving, and collaborative learning interactive and fun. Students are able to be engaged with their learning and use what they know about their subject in a virtual world. Although debated, Dale's Cone of Experience (seen below) is a good visualization of how we learn and retain information - doing and re-teaching provides the most retention for students overall.

%'s are for representation purposes only (take it as you will).

Multiple Intelligence impacted by different delivery methods.

Check out this short, four minute video created by Valve when The Evergreen School came to test out their project ideas in the fall of 2011.

I posted a blog article a week or two back about interactivity being the key to engaged learners -- this video shows it in action. They will have fun and learn.

Teachers are also able to create and submit lesson plans that will be shared with other users and you are able to access other users' lesson plans - it is very collaborative.

How do I make it happen and find out more?

In order to get your free educational licenses of Steam for Schools and Portal 2, you will need to apply for access. You can visit the Teach With Portals website and click the link in the top right corner to complete the application. 

You will need to provide the following information:

1. The supervising teacher’s contact information

1. Your organization’s name, address, phone

1. The subject being taught

1. The number of computers being used

1. The number of students who will be users

Be sure to have that info when you fill out your application. There is are many more details that you can look over on the Teach with Portals website. I encourage you to look through the FAQ section and watch the video. There are also example lesson plans that you can look through and practice using Portal 2 or give the program a trial run. Forums are available for help and support.

Encourage your teachers and administrators to look into this free offering from Valve to enhance learning opportunities in multiple learning styles. Please share this article with your teacher friends and administrators via Twitter, E-Mail, Facebook, Google+, or word of mouth!

Geekly Update - Join me on Facebook!

The Counseling Geek - Now on Facebook!

Wanted to share with you that you can now connect with The Counseling Geek via Facebook. I am not a huge fan of the monster that is Facebook, but do see the value of it for things like schools and bloggers. I still refuse to use it personally, but I know it is the second most popular site in the world and want to offer connectivity to all users. So if you would like to follow updates and other newsworthy items via Facebook, please Follow/Like the page today! That is all for now - carry on.

Help Me - Help You!

Fundraising For You!

Update (7/30): We have raised $290 (as of 7/30/12) with $2610 to go to reach my goal. Remember, that all funds go towards YOU -- the counselors/educators. If we reach the goal, we fund a Pro-D workshop for a district -- if we fall short, we fund registrations for ASCA 2013 in Philadelphia. Please share and consider donating if you are able.

I decided I wanted to make a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I want to offer something back to you, the counselors and educators. I know that funding for professional development is tight and many of you simply cannot afford to seek it out yourselves. That is where I want to help with the help of others.

Indiegogo.com

I recently found Indiegogo.com and liked what I saw (see the awesome community contributions towards Karen!). You may have heard of another site similar to Indiegogo, Kickstarter - more focused on helping start-up companies or bands find funding in return for goods/services or perks. I want to do an experiment using Indiegogo.

My BHAG!

So here it is -- in 75 days, I want to raise $2900 (or more) for two reasons. First and a small part of the BHAG, is to get a custom domain name for this blog (www.thecounselinggeek.com sound good?) and a small amount towards promoting via advertisements to drive some traffic and gain a follower base. (Cost: ~$150-200). The main part of the goal is this: I want to give a scholarship to a school or district to have an ASCA sponsored professional development 1-day workshop come to your site. I selected two offerings that the school can choose from: Data Boot Camp for School Counselors and Administrators or Cyber-bullying and Internet Safety. 

Both workshops cost $2500 for the full day and are presented by leaders in their fields.

Any funding raised beyond the $2900 will go into scholarships towards the 2013 ASCA National Conference. There currently are not any scholarships for people (especially student members) who have a hard time affording the registration fee or travel costs. I was in that boat for the 2011 conference in Seattle, but luckily I was able to get some costs covered by a local community agency so I was able to make it happen. Others are not so lucky.

If we are not able to reach these goals, I will use the funds to meet goal #1 and then put the rest into scholarships towards ASCA 2013.

Help me make it happen!

What can you do? First, if you are able - donate. Any amount is welcome and will go towards these goals. If you are not able or interested in donating, please share this with your contacts, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and colleagues -- they may want to help! Through the power of community, we can do this.

Click here to read more and donate.

Thank you!

School Counseling Technology Series: Dropbox

Cloud-based file storage wünderkind!

I have been using Dropbox for almost two years now, in both my professional and personal life. I use it so much that I now rarely store any documents on my local "My Docuements" folder, but most everything goes into Dropbox. Started in 2007 by MIT graduates, it quickly gained a strong following. They run on the "Freemium" model, which grants new users a free allocation of 2GB of cloud based storage. Users are able to earn more storage by referring new users and through other, more fun events they stage throughout the year. Last year, they held a large scavenger hunt throughout the internet for prizes and free storage space. Overall, it is a strong model and many companies are starting to implement this structure.

Why should I be interested in Dropbox?

Fair question. We talked about the power of the "Cloud" (or digital storage on centralized servers that are accessible everywhere) in my posts about Google Docs. It allows users simplified collaboration, centralized access to their folders and files, and automatic backup options. From a school counselor's point of view, Dropbox is a powerful tool that lets us distribute files (like: permission slips, scholarship info, application guidelines, graduation requirements, and anything else you can think of) to anyone we share the link with. Also, like Google Docs -- users can elect to have people visiting the shared folder full access (read/write) or read-only access through sharing of a link (not able to make changes to files or delete them). In order to start using Dropbox, you need to 1.) signup for the service online and 2.) download the installer which integrates Dropbox into your Windows/Mac/Linux system. It is also able to be used on mobile smartphones (iOS, Blackberry, and Android) and iPads. It will have a system tray icon (that stuff next to the clock in Windows) and add options to your right-click context menu and a folder in your documents. Anything you put in that folder is sync'd with Dropbox automatically.

Visual representation of how Dropbox works.

Professional Development: The use it or lose it phenomenon.

We have to eat what we teach!

How many times do we tell our students to keep pursuing their educations and use words like "lifelong learners"? I would venture a pretty safe guess of at least daily if not many times a day. This is sound advice and one that we should be working our hardest to plant in our students minds, but I feel that educators often conveniently remove themselves from this goal/requirement. Why should we get the free pass on continuing to enlarge our knowledge base? Why do we think that, when we have gotten our credentials, masters degrees, or doctorates, our brains are suddenly saturated and cannot hold any more information or else it will go into overload mode? It amazes me the lengths some (note: I say some, most people reading this blog are not of this group) educators will go to avoid having to continue learning. (More after the page break!)

School Counseling Technology Series: Google Docs Part 2

Google Docs: Forms, Spreadsheets, and Drawings

Welcome back to the second part of the School Counseling Technology Series featuring Google Docs. This is the second video blog entry of the two part general overview and walkthrough of Google Docs. In this video, you will see the form function, spreadsheet function, and drawing function in action. In my opinion - the form feature is the most valuable tool from Google Docs, so pay attention and learn something new. It will boost your data gathering skills and information base substantially.

Below the video - I have embedded the form from the video using the embed method described. Please feel free to take the short survey to experience the user side of the form feature and see the end results. I have shared the form tool and the help page link that you can access if you are having problems or want to learn more.

I am planning on covering more in-depth and specific uses of Google Docs in the future, but wanted to be sure everyone had the chance to familiarize themselves with the programs before we dove in too deep. If you have any examples of work you have done with Google Docs, please share them with me (thecounselinggeek@gmail.com) or email me your ideas/questions.

Video and links after the break...

ANFSCD: Two text resources to share!

Two texts that can enlighten both your students and you!

I am finishing up reading through So, You Are Going to College?! 2nd Edition by San Bolkan, PhD, professor of communication at CSU Long Beach, which is a very power-packed, but short book that will give any upper class high school student head start when getting ready to head off to college. The content is high-quality and written in a very entertaining way to capture even teenage readers' minds. At just under 130 pages, the book takes readers through six chapters covering myths about college, how to be an adult in college, the basics of communication in college, how to listen in class, studying, and finally helping to understand the end goal of the college experience. I am adding this book to my "loaner" library to give out to students.


Second is Counseling Toward Solutions: A Practical Solution-Focused Program, more of a textbook but regardless is a gold-mine of information to bring into your program. It is much thicker and not as interesting as So, You Are Going to College?! 2nd Edition, but I believe in solution focused counseling techniques and hope that others can start seeing the value behind it (check out positive psychology too!).

*Note:* While neither of these books deals with technology, I hope to also provide some insightful resources that I come across and find valuable. I promise not to waste your time with meaningless posts.

Security Bulletin - Keep Your Info...Yours (hint: Use LastPass)

Beating a Dead Horse?

You have all probably heard about maintaining strong passwords and varying those passwords over your different sites. In light of the recent password leaks by eHarmony and LinkedIn, I think now is a great time to talk about why and how we can ensure our passwords are strength level "James Bond" and easy enough to remember.

Why does it matter?

Most people know that password protecting your info is smart and needed in this day, when it seems everyone is trying to steal your identity. However, some folks are uninformed about the importance of not only password protection, but strong password protection (if your password is 'password' or '123456789' -- I am talking to you!). Why you ask? Because typically when the hacker tries to access your info - they are typically doing so by something called a "brute force attack", which actually is a pretty good mental picture. They are coming at your defenses with an endless amount of password combinations until they get one that works. They start with the most common passwords (which all hackers know) and then start going through the dictionary. This process sometimes takes a long time, but let me dispel a myth - they are not sitting at their computer typing in every...single...word that they try. They wrote a piece of software that tries a word every second or even faster until they break in. They can just turn the program on and come back to see if they were able to access your account. So using weak passwords increases your chances of having your data breached.

School Counseling Technology Series - Google Docs Part 1 (Video Blog)

This week's entry in the School Counseling Technology Series will cover part one of the Google Docs tutorial I have planned for you. This is a (most likely) two part video blog covering the different aspects of Google Docs, how we can use these powerful tools as educators, and a quick tutorial on how to use each program within Google Docs. Google recently changed their Google Docs to Google Drive, which has a downloadable program that syncs a folder on your PC with all of your Google Docs files -- this is not required to use Google Docs.

This first post will cover the Document and Presentation functions of Google Docs. These three are going to most likely be your biggest focus (along with the Form & Spreadsheet function). As I mentioned in the preview of Google Docs, it is all hosted in the "Cloud" or digitally online. This provides us with the ability to share, collaborate, and access our work anywhere with internet connectivity (including phones, tablets/iPads, and laptops).

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or requests for things you would like to see covered - I will do my best to provide. Shoot me an email, comment below, or Tweet me.

Video and links after the break.

eLearning Software - Interactive is key.

Raptivity Example

The Attention Battle

Teachers, counselors, and all educators are finding the challenge of captivating our students is ever increasing. With the popularity of younger and younger students playing video games, using smart phones, and demanding a higher level of interactivity in their lives -- how can we keep up?

Edudemic posted an article claiming that one possible solution can be to integrate interactive courseware into the curriculum. You can read the entire posting by following the link here or at the bottom of this post.

"Interactive courseware allows students to actively participate in the learning process and retain the knowledge learned through the use of simple and easy modes."

The article also touches on a topic that I feel strongly about - that technology is not only another "rendition of a lecture". While technology is a valuable tool, it has its own place; it is not just for regurgitating the info in another format. When we use technology, we do so to improve and enhance our lessons, programs, or processes...not duplicate or completely replace (in most cases).

Luckily for those of us who cannot code a new piece of software - someone has taken on that burden and helped educators be able to create your own learning interactions. There is a service called Raptivity that provides templates (180+) which you can modify and use in your classroom. This is a paid service and I have not actually used it, but it would be worth checking out. They have very interesting tools like interactive flash cards and other on demand items that you can integrate into lessons and/or your class webpage. [Edudemic]

ANFSCD - Free Father's Day Card Activity

Cardstore is offering a completely FREE (including shipping) customizable father's day card. Many students may not be able to afford any type of gift so this could be a cool activity to do with your students if you have access to a computer lab.

You can help your students customize and send their dad a high quality card. Fathers play a vital role in students' lives and many do not have a male father figure, so perhaps encourage them to create one for a male role model that they look up to. There are many designs that students can insert photos, text, or other creative things. I sent one to my father!

*I will from time to time post And now for something completely different (ANFSCD) posts that may not be directly related to counseling, but have an application or I feel that may be of interest to those wanting to expand their understanding of technology. It may also just be a sweet resource you can use!


http://goo.gl/HXzbd <-- Link to how to access the deal (use coupon code LUVDAD2 at checkout). No word on when it expires (before fathers day?).