Adobe Education article

Technology tools help counselors publish professional web presentations

School counseling teams face similar challenges across the state of Washington when it comes to communicating with students and parents: How do we develop and distribute information to large audiences in our school community on an annual basis? Developing the presentations we give to students and parents usually involves researching current information and consolidating that data into a format that engages student interest. As counselors, we constantly create and update presentations for different grade levels on topics such as college planning, transitioning from middle to high school, strategies to have a successful freshman year, and the financial aid process. Some counseling teams develop these presentations for overhead projectors, copying the information onto clear plastic sheets and then producing multiple sets, one for each counselor to use in a classroom or auditorium. Once the presentation is finished, these overhead sheets usually get put into a file folder and then are tucked away until the next year, when they are dusted off and once again used with the appropriate audience.

In an effort to increase our appeal with technology-savvy students as well as align our delivery system with current technology trends, the counselors at Olympia High School have converted these traditional presentations into a Microsoft PowerPoint format. The advantage of using PowerPoint is that the information can be posted on a website with a program like Macromedia® FlashPaper® from Adobe or presented in a classroom using a laptop and projector without wasting time and resources on copying information onto overhead sheets. The information is kept in digital format, ready to be easily updated each year and then displayed with a projector or printed on demand.

There are many other kinds of information besides counseling curriculum that our counselors may need to distribute during the school year. Counselors must invest a lot of time preparing for events such as parent nights and financial aid forums. They may spend weeks on details such as advertising, acquiring a possible speaker, and providing reading materials. Many parents and students attend the event, but there are always calls the next day from those who could not attend because of other commitments. They usually ask when the next opportunity will be to get the information they were not able to acquire.

Counselors now have the ability to provide up-to-date information to parents and students in a presentation format that is accessible at any time with a technology tool called Adobe Presenter, part of Adobe Acrobat® Connect™ Professional software. The counselor now can develop a presentation using PowerPoint, record his or her voice to accompany each slide, publish the presentation, and make it available to students and parents on the school website. The tool is simple to use and the counselor does not need to have a technical background to learn it. All it takes is a knowledge of Power Point and how to record the presenter's dialog for each slide in the presentation. Adobe Flash® technology takes over from there. The PowerPoint presentation is converted to a sleek and easy-to-use interface for the web that can be customized for each presenter. The counselor just needs to give the specific website link to the school webmaster to post for instant parent and student access to the presentation. The presentation can also be updated with ease. If information changes on a few slides, the presenter can rerecord only the individual slides that need to be updated. The application also allows for attachments of documents with useful information such as e-mail contacts. Students and parents not only can view the presentation at their leisure, but can also download the documents they would have received if they attended the school-hosted workshop.

There are obviously some significant advantages to using this technology. Students and parents can view the presentation as often as they want from the comfort of their home or office. They can even watch a particular slide more than once if the information is complicated or abstract. Having a copy of the presentation on the web as well as in the school's counseling center means the information is more accessible. An advantage for counselors is that the presentations are not video recorded, so the presenter can be at home in comfortable clothes while still producing a professional web presentation. The information is typically displayed with text and voice only, but a presenter can attach a thumbnail picture or supplemental video to make for a richer viewer experience. One other advantage is that Adobe Presenter enables data collection. If they wish, counselors can generate a report showing the number of times their presentation has been accessed and which slides were viewed. This data can help a presenter determine which slides were of the most interest to viewers, information that can help shape future presentations.

Counselors at Olympia High School have used Adobe Presenter this year to publish presentations on college planning, financial aid, middle school transition, freshman survival skills, and more. The presentations are available through our website. For example, we used Adobe Presenter to develop a College Planning workshop that we give in the fall to around 100 parents and students. Since publishing the presentation on our website, we have had approximately 80 parents and students view the entire hour-long presentation from start to finish. This is nearly as many who viewed the original presentation.

We encourage counselors interested in our program to go to our website to try out the presentations. We have also included links to the Adobe website to learn more about FlashPaper and Adobe Presenter and access them on a trial basis.

Web links

• Olympia High School Counseling Center
• Adobe Presenter
• Macromedia FlashPaper 2

Contacts

Olympia High School
Dave Forrester
School Counselor
(360) 596-7032
E-mail:dforrester@osd.wednet.edu

Adobe
Bruce Steele
Education & Non-Profit
801 N 34th Street
Seattle, WA 98103
800-846-2481 ext. 7195
E-mail:bsteele@adobe.com