Our counsellors Ramanjineyulu and Bayapareddy have been on the road since late June doing counselling sessions at a different junior college in the district every week. Here is our travelling kit that keeps our work running smoothly in the face of different situations we face when we do our sessions.
1.) Junction box with extension cord. This has been one of the most useful pieces of equipment, since digital audio-visual display is an important part of our sessions.
We have an extension cord that is 30 metres (!) long. This is necessary because in government colleges not all the rooms have electric connections. In one of our recent visits, there was power and a plug point only in the Principal’s room in the entire college, and the long extension cord saved us.
2.) Laptop and Projector: These are a very important part of our sessions. We use several short movies and powerpoints in our sessions. Carefully combining films, presentations, discussion and a survey keeps the session lively. Even then sometimes its hard to keep students focussed for a 2 hour session. Students who are not doing well academically also seem to struggle with attention span and classroom discipline.
We bought an Acer projector for this and its been doing pretty well. It unexpectedly conked out at one point, but Acer replaced the piece under warranty without giving us any trouble. That was a relief!
3.) Speaker: Since we have films with sound, we take a speaker with us too. There are pretty good speakers that you get nowadays that will serve for a class of 50-100 students and that cost below Rs 5000/-. The ones I checked out before settling on the one I bought at Bangalore’s K.H.Road were all unbranded, there doesn’t seem to be any good brand in this segment. So far its working fine.
4.) Banner: Good for name recognition which is important for us as we want students to remember us and call back. We use a flex banner which we hang with ropes. Earlier we found that the banner kept tearing, due to the pressure from the ropes. We got a special banner made with reinforced material and with plastic eyelets for the ropes and this has worked.
Keep a pen drive handy for sudden requirements to transfer content.
We haven’t had too much problems with power cuts. We did create a flex with some of the content in the presentations, to use in case of a power cut, but we found it was not effective.
We do a survey with the students before and after the session and we find its a good way to get them thinking more about careers and what they should do.
We get a certificate signed by the college principal stating that we have come there to do the session, this is useful for records and evidence.
We have crossed 4000 students covered in our counselling sessions in close to 30 colleges so far.
Bhavishyath Counselling 