As a school counselor, you are always looking for ways to help your students grow and develop. Technology can be a great tool to help you achieve your goals!
There are many different software programs available that can help you create individualized plans for each student, track their progress, provide support when needed, and more.
Some of the common technologies school counselors use are:
- Scoir
- BridgeU
- Spotivity
- MaiaLearning
- Salesforce Education Cloud for K-12
- Powerschool
- Naviance
Need a new way to approach your role?
Continue reading for a look inside some of these technologies and how they can help you succeed.
Safely track student engagement, personalize in-school and after-school activities per student, and gain never-before-obtained student data with the spotivity portal for school counselors. Request a demo of spotivity.
Why School Counselors Need Technology
The old method school counselors used for school development was the paper-based student information system.
Back then, data would be stored in physical files, which made it difficult to keep track of student activities and engagement. But now, with the advent of technology, school counselors have access to much more powerful tools.
Today, school counselors can use technology to:
- Provide support and resources when needed.
- Track progress and growth over time.
- Develop individualized plans for each student.
Not all technology is made equal. Here are five major players in the school counselor space we want to introduce you to. It will make your job much easier, we promise.
5 Softwares Every School Counselor Should Know About
Here’s the truth: If school counselors can obtain more actionable data about their students, then those counselors are much better positioned to motivate each student to spend their high school years as engaged and prepared as possible.
Here are five technologies school counselors should seriously consider:
1. spotivity
With the spotivity online portal, school counselors can safely track engagement and compare metrics against their school peers. And with the spotivity app, students can take a personalized test that connects them with relevant in-school and after-school activities.
Now, schools can gain access to the data they need to make better decisions and students can be introduced to activities they actually enjoy.
spotivity uses the “Pocket Genie.” It functions like a virtual guidance counselor that helps high-school students find fun after-school activities to do in their area.
First, students take a personalized test inside the spotivity app and are asked questions about their personal hopes, dreams, and goals.
Then, the Pocket Genie finds after-school activities and programs that track best with each individual user to either maximize their potential or address their weaknesses. Over 400 activities exist – opportunities like fencing, tutoring, volunteering, poetry, and more are all included. .
More about Spotivity
- Website: https://www.spotivity.com
- Pricing: $125/month*
- Resources: https://www.spotivity.com/pocket-genie/
*Pricing methodology: one high school with 1,000 students. Priced at cost per month. spotivity charges annually irrespective of headcount.
2. Scoir
Scoir breaks down the college application process step-by-step by helping students understand their career interests, research colleges, and complete the application itself.
School counselors can use it to assist students and their parents/guardians in making informed decisions about college opportunities and career choices.
For example, with Scoir, counselors can manage their student’s college application process with a project timeline dashboard.
More about Scoir:
- Website: https://www.scoir.com/
- Pricing: $140/month*
- Resources: https://scoir.helpdocs.io/
*Pricing methodology: one high school with 1,000 students. Priced at cost per month.
3. BridgeU
BridgeU is a company in the guidance counselor/college counseling space.
Based in the UK, BridgeU works to provide guidance counseling for high school students looking to apply to college. By partnering with high schools, BridgeU hopes to make college counseling more accessible through its online platform.
The big benefit of BridgeU in our eyes is its lesson plans and resources that help structure a high school’s counseling curriculum. The lesson plans help schedule key milestones and learning objectives for each year.
More about BridgeU
- Website: https://bridge-u.com/
- Pricing: $441.67/month*
- Resources: https://bridge-u.com/resources/
*Pricing methodology: one high school with 1,000 students. Priced at cost per month.
4. MaiaLearning
MaiaLearning streamlines the college application process by helping students with task management, career planning, and university planning.
Some of the top ways MaiaLearning will help your students:
- Conduct self-assessments around interests, personality and work values
- Recommend careers where students are likely to thrive
- Help students understand their strengths and interests and match those to career possibilities
- Create a career plan with attributes and actions needed to work towards students career goals
- Create a 4-year plan
- Track completed courses and progress towards graduation
- Review their school’s course catalog
More about MaiaLearning
- Website: https://www.maialearning.com/v3/
- Pricing: $500.00-$1000.00/month*
- Resources: N/A
*Pricing methodology: one high school with 1,000 students. Priced at cost per month.
5. Salesforce Education Cloud for K-12
Salesforce Education Cloud for K-12 is an educational SaaS that offers multiple features for families, students, and counselors to be able to interact all on one platform using Salesforce’s proprietary customer relationship management system.
We love how the platform tracks a child’s progress in school and also offers assistance in admissions and enrollment for each school.
More about Salesforce Education Cloud
- Website: https://www.ellucian.com/
- Pricing: $72/month/student*
- Resources: https://www.salesforce.org/k-12-education/
*Pricing methodology: one high school with 1,000 students. Priced at cost per month.
How Can School Counselors Help Students Virtually?
School counselors can have a big impact on their students even when working remotely. By helping students learn how to conduct themselves online and using digital literacy tools, counselors can help students succeed in the virtual setting.
While the pandemic has settled, the online tools mentioned above have paved the way for school counselors to engage with their students in a more relaxed online world.
spotivity, a school engagement & activity tracking platform, has helped schools transform into a more online-friendly environment and has allowed them to engage their students where they are at.
With spotivity, students are able to take a quick survey (via the app) to then be exposed to online or local activities both within your school or outside of the classroom. Activities like fencing, online chess, online cooking classes, tutoring, volunteering, poetry, and more.
Additionally, the app allows schools to upload video links (YouTube / Vimeo) for remote engagement when a-synchronous program delivery can be done by recorded videos. Now, programs can be viewed at times more conveniently for students and meet them wherever they might be outside of school time.
Here are all the ways spotivity helps students thrive online:
- Track all school and after-school student activity via the spotivity transcript & pull reports.
- View student profiles to help navigate personal bias when providing insights into whatever decision-making process the student might need.
- Learn about activities that track students’ respective talents/traits.
- Gain insights into students’ personalities and quirks such that that knowledge can be positively utilized forever.
- Students can connect with each other via the user-only internal forum – a way to build friendships and contact networks across the world!
- Through Parental Tethering, all spotivity teens can keep their parents/guardians in the know about their activities and whereabouts while avoiding big brother overreach.
Click here to see what spotivity is all about and how it can be a “sidekick” for school counselors.
Summary
Being a school counselor is a hugely important job. It requires a lot of organization, and this is why finding the right software to assist with the workload can go a long way in helping a counselor do an even better job.
Fortunately, you can use spotivity’s revolutionary app to find after-school activities for high school students across sectors like sport, art, career, tech, and life skills.
The right software can reduce the amount of work a counselor has to do on a regular basis. With all the tasks that a counselor needs to do with students, teachers, and families, it can be difficult to keep track. spotivity makes it easier to track and manage the whole progress.
Click here to take advantage of our offer.
