Blogging School Psychologists: Update!

School Psychologists' Blogs

Notes from the School Psychologist

"I loved school when I was little.  I loved it so much I played "school" on the weekends. I work with kids who hate school.  This is my blog."   The author of this blog is Dr. Rebecca (Bell) Branstetter, who lives in San Francisco, California.  She is a Clinical Psychologist and Licensed Educational Psychologist, and specializes in assessment, therapy, and coaching with school aged youth and young adults. She has a great sense of humor!

Christine Eagan, School Psychologist
Christine Eagan is a school psychologist in the Newport News Public Schools. Her areas of professional interest include cognitive-behavioral therapy, interventions with at-risk youth, neuropsychology, and play therapy.

• A School Psychologist's Weblog

Lianro, the author of the blog,  is a school psychologist who works for a large school district. She is involved with RTI - Response to Intervention, and documents how the RTI is changing the role of the school psychologist. Lianro has a sister with special needs who was part of her inspiration to go pursue her career choice.  She enjoys exploring technology, among other things. 


School Psychology Blog and Podcast with Dr. Gaston Weisz
Podcast Link
Dr. Weisz focuses his blog and podcast discussions around school psychology, education, special education, parenting, child development, teaching practices and staff development. If you visit his blog, take a look at his great list of links!


Assessment and Intervention in School Psychology
"Attempting to Navigate Between Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense in Order to Enhance Student Outcomes" Ryan McGill, the author of this blog, is an intern school psychologist in a large public school district in Southern California and is completing his Ph.D.  His research interests include instructional reform, data based decision making, and assessment/measurement issues. He is a certified school suicide prevention specialist.


School Psychologist Blog Files
Erin N. King, the author of this blog, focuses her posts on topics for parents of students who are in special education.  Erin works in a school district and is knowledgeable about special education laws, disabilities, assessment, and promoting educational and emotional growth in children.  She also hosts the LD Help Online Forum.


Cool School Psychologist
The author of this blog works as a school psychologist in a large midwestern city. . She started blogging in 2006, when she was a practicum student. "A potpourri mish-mash of posts, sometimes boring, sometimes funny, sometimes just posts about nothing, or something, or posts about everything, yada yada. Whatever. There ya go. Amen."


Brian S. Friedlander's Assistive Technology Blog
"Dr. Friedlander is a school psychologist with expertise in the area of assistive technology. Dr. Friedlander has a passion for using all kinds of technology in his professional work. He is very interested in the use of mind mapping, project management and Web 2.0 technologies. Dr. Friedlander readily applies these technologies in the graduate courses that he teaches at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, N.J. Dr. Friedlander consults to many school districts and business organizations in N.J. and is available for workshops, training and presentations."   Brian has lots of interesting posts about technology beyond assistive technology.


The Black Briefcase: The Blog of the Life of a School Psychologist
"True tales from a school psychologist, an ongoing monologue about the state of education and what is really happening inside our schools"   "I'm just an ordinary school psychologist with an extraordinary sense of humor. At least that's what I tell myself."

IQ's Corner:  Kevin McGrew's Blog

"Intelligent Insights on Intelligence Theories" Kevin McGrew, the author of this blog, is the research director of the Woodcock-Munoz foundation, a private non-profit operating foundation that supports the advancement of contemporary cognitive assessments.  He was involved in the standardization of the Woodcock-Johnson R and WJ-III, and is a visiting professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He also is the director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics.   Kevin's other blog is Tic Toc Talk: The IQ Brain Clock, "An attempt to track the "pulse" of contemporary research and theory regarding the psychology/neuroscience of brain-based mental/interval time keeping. In addition, the relevance of neuroscience research to learning/education will also be covered."

Diary of a School Psychologist

"This blog is an attempt to detail the working life of an average school psychologist. My hope is to provide a view of the field for people that are unfamiliar with school psychology or are thinking of entering the field.  Due to confidentiality, many student issues will be left particularly vague."

A Psych Mommy:  A School Psychologist Becomes a Mommy

This blog is written by Shari, who blogs about motherhood. "I'm a school psychologist learning the ropes about being a new mom.  Come share in the journey as I figure out my new job".

RELATED

Edufire Blog's Top 10 Psychology Blogs on the Web

(The TechPsych blog is on this list!)

School Psychology Awareness Week

School psychologists promote positive possibilities and encourage gratitude towards others during National School Psychology Awareness Week—November 9–13, 2009


Bethesda, MD—The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has designated November 9–13, 2009 as National School Psychology Awareness Week. This year’s theme, “See the possibilities in you. We do!” seeks to shine a light on the positive work school psychologists do to promote the possibilities for academic and personal success in the lives of the students they serve. The program involves a series of resources and activities that school psychologists can use to reach out to school staff, students and parents to help students feel connected, supported, and ready to achieve their individual goals.


NASP represents more than 25,500 school psychologists who work in schools and other education and health settings. School psychologists work with parents and educators to ensure that every child has the mental health and learning support they need to succeed in school and life. This year’s program focuses promoting students’ positive attitudes and competence by highlighting student strengths and the many ways schools reinforce those strengths. Specifically, school psychologists will be recognizing students who make significant progress toward their goals through the “Student POWER Award” Program and honoring adult members of the school community who contribute in an outstanding way to improved outcomes for students through the “Possibilities in Action Partner” Program.


“Adults make many important contributions to the development of children. Seeing and advancing the possibilities within students, even in the face of difficulties, is critical to helping them achieve their best in school, at home, and in life.” says NASP President Patti Harrison. “Some people go above and beyond, making extraordinary efforts to promote students’ competencies, create opportunities for children to meet their goals, and expand schools’ capacity to foster success. We want to recognize these adults who are partners for ‘Possibilities in Action’ and have been admirable influences on the lives of children.”


Additionally this year, NASP is launching the “Gratitude Works” Program, an effort to have students around the country write letters of gratitude to someone who has made a difference in their life or the lives of others. The “Gratitude Works” Program seeks to reinforce students’ practice of gratitude as one of many prosocial behaviors that can foster individual resilience and well-being as well as contribute to overall positive school climate. Promoting positive attitudes, such as gratitude, helps students become more aware of the strengths in themselves and others. Research has revealed that children who feel and express gratitude express more positive views of both home and school and improve their academic performance.


School psychologists around the country are working with teachers to help students identify and honor school staff, family members, students, and other educators or community members who contribute to their ability to achieve their best. Some students are choosing to write letters of gratitude to people who they do not even know personally, such as military servicemen and women and emergency responders.


As part of National School Psychology Awareness Week, NASP has developed downloadable and adaptable resources to help school psychologists participate in these programs. Further information on these programs, school psychologists and the contribution they make in guiding student success is available online at http://www.nasponline.org/communications/index.aspx.


For further information contact NASP Director of Marketing and Communications, Kathy Cowan at (301) 347-1665 or kcowan@naspweb.org, or visit www.nasponline.org.


RELATED
Ready to Learn, Empowered to Teach, Excellence in Education for the 21st Century: National Association of School Psychologists' Guiding Principles for Effective Education
http://www.nasponline.org/advocacy/2008educationpolicydocument.pdf


NASP

Links to Blogging School Psychologists

• IQ's Corner: Kevin McGrew's blog
• Assessment and Intervention in School Psychology Blog
• SchoolPsych Blog
• Dr. Weisz: School Psychology Blog & Podcasts
• Diary of a School Psychologist
• Brain S. Friedlander: Assistive Technology Blog
• The Black Briefcase (School Psychologist's blog)
• Notes from the School Psychologist
• School Psychologist Blog Files
• New School Psych Blog
• Cool School Psychologist
• Psychmommy blog
• NASP Blogs   (Members Only)
  

Data Systems Standards and Guidelines from the National Center for Education Statistics

If you are involved in data-driven decision making in your school or school district, it is important to keep up with the most recent standards regarding data systems. The National Center for Education Statistics has recently developed a toolbox for educational data system designers and managers who are "looking for ways to build and/or improve education data systems".

According to the NCES website, the Education Data Model, Version I is a "comprehensive, localized, conceptual model that provides a generic blueprint for schools and districts. This blueprint enables schools to evaluate and improve instructional tools, communicate those needs to their umbrella agency or directly to vendors, enhance the movement of student information from one district to another, and in the end, have better tools to inform instruction. Using a standard Education Data Model as a starting point contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the need for data, how data are used, and the questions that can be answered with the data. For instance, the Data Model helps to answer questions such as the following:

• What data do schools, LEAs, and states need to collect and manage at the local level to meet the information needs of students, staff, and other stakeholders?
• What data do they need to effectively manage education organizations in order to increase success in teaching, learning, and school leadership?
• What data do they need to efficiently manage and run an education organization from a fiscal and administrative perspective?

A single, comprehensive model of education data is prerequisite to establishing automated systems with the right data, data that are comparable across time and systems, and data accurate enough to answer our questions".

Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matt

If you are interested learning more, you can browse the data model on the NCES Data Model web page. Also take a look at the "How to Use the Data Model" on-line guide.

Here are a few graphics from the NCES website:

Concept map behind the development of the data model:



Taxonomy - entities, classes, and attributes:



Here is the relationship diagram of the data model:


Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matter.

Black Briefcase, a school psychologist's blog..."I didn't know there were people in the building (school) who didn't know how to turn on the computer"

The Black Briefcase blog is written by a school psychologist who writes about "true tales from a School Psychologist. An ongoing monologue about the state of education and what's really happening inside our schools."

I especially liked this post:

Land of the Luddites

"Maybe Luddite is too strong of a word. Technologically naive seems more appropriate. I've been on a crusade to get people in my school to embrace basic technology: email, web-based programs, word processing programs, i.e., nothing fancy. As I've been trying to educate others I've noticed the different levels of technology naivete that people have in my building. My district, like many others in the nation, has moved towards using a web-based program for writing IEPs. The problem has been that only two people out of 6 are comfortable enough with the program to complete an IEP. Everyone else has expressed their trepidation towards using the computer. One of the drawbacks is that the entry fields do not appear as they do within an IEP so that those who are used to completing them by hand do not know what they are looking at on the computer...." -Black Briefcase

This sounds a lot like the EasyIEP program that was adopted by my school district this year! It doesn't map to the real world, and for teachers who aren't used to doing more than sending e-mail, the application can be quite daunting.


Black Briefcase goes on to provide a couple of examples that shed light on why technology is lagging in many many classrooms:

"The last week, I've experienced two different eye-opening moments on the vast technological divide that exists in my school. Those on the inexperienced end amaze me. I was asked by a co-worker how to attach a file to an email. I thought that was the lowest, but that was beaten the next day. I was sitting in my office when I got an internal call from another room. A teacher was on the other line and she asked me if I had turned off the computer when I used it in the lab. I used the lab when I taught my coworkers how to use the web-based program last week. I guess I turn off the computer out of habit; I was finished using it so it seemed like the thing to do. I didn't know that there were people in the building that didn't know how to turn on the computer. So I figured it must have been something complex. I went to the lab to see what was wrong. The LCD projector was working so that was one less problem to deal with, but the screen was black. I thought that maybe something was unplugged and when I looked at the computer, I realized that it wasn't on. I pressed the button on the CPU and the computer sprang to life. It couldn't have been that easy, I figured that I would have to do something more than that. Well it appeared that the teacher was pressing the wrong button. Instead of the on/off switch she was pressing the button that opens the CPU. If you're familiar with old Dell computers then you know what I'm talking about. She was pressing the wrong button and couldn't understand why it wouldn't turn on. That was a new one for me. I thought I had seen it all until that moment." -Black Briefcase

One of Black Briefcase's solutions to address the "luddite" phenomenon is to share tech tips from David Pogue's New York Times blog post. That is a great idea!

A Timeline of Teens and Technology: Presentation for School Psychologists

Amanda Lenhart, of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, presented "A Timeline of Teens and Technology " to the Policy & Advocacy in the Schools meeting of a group of school psychologists in August 2007. According to the presentation, the impact and implications are as follows:

• Those who have grown up with interactive media want to manipulate, remix, and share content.
• They expect to be in conversation with others about content- access to an audience
• Increasingly savvy about what they share, particularly on SNS-protecting privacy
• Social media is always on, and persistent
• But teens are still teens-the fundamentals of that time of life are still there.

It is important for educators to keep in mind how rapidly things are changing for their students regarding their creative and social use of the Internet and new technologies.



Link to PowerPoint Presentation

Food for Thought: This video about provides a good overview of computer and on-line privacy and security- if you work with students or if you are a parent, you'll find it useful:
"When I go to U. VA". is from UVA's Responsible Computing effort:

Family, Friends & Community Resources (from the Pew Website)

Parent and Teen Internet Use

Teens and Online Stranger Contact

Cyberbullying

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks

Social Networking Websites and Teens