Career Collage

Dear Students,

Please remember that you have until Friday to complete your Career Cluster Foldable. If you have not completed it by Friday, you will need to take it home and complete it for homework. The book you have been using: The Occupational Outlook Handbook is also available on line. This will give you the same information for the catagories:
Career /Nature of work /working conditions /training and qualifications /job outlook /earnings /related occuapations /suorces of information.

I'm also adding a link to a website that will let you make an electronic collage. You can play with it to get an idea of how you want to do your career collages.
Have a great weekend.
See the Art Zone and click on Collage Machine. You have to have Shockwave installed on your computer to get this to work.

Career Multi-Media Project for my 8th graders

This week we will be working on our Career Investigations by teams. Each team was able to pick a career cluster and from that career cluster they will research four careers that fall within that cluster. Career Clusters

Each profession will be presented in the form of a foldable that includes these categories:

Career / Nature of Work / Working Conditions / Job Outlook/Low, Medium and High Salary range in the field / Related Occupations / Professional Organizations for more information.

Students will be using the Occupational Outlook Handbook for their research.

After each team has completed their research, they will present their findings to the class. Each team will then decide which career they would like to spotlight. Their "Spotlight on Careers" choice will be turned into an audio file that will be uploaded onto this blog. (The students have asked me to password protect so that only those with a password will be able to listen.)

I compare this assignment to learning how to do long division. When a student is learning how to do long division, a teacher will NOT let them use a calculator while developing the concept and the skill. After a student understands long division and can perform it successfully, they are then permitted to use one for various assignments.

The goal of this assignment is to help students lean how to do career research while reinforcing employable skills like reading, writing, communicating, team work, etc. Once they have successfully completed their Career Cluster research, then I will introduce multimedia tools.

Each class will have several careers they want to spotlight. We hope to be able to find a few brave parents who are employed in those professions that will be willing to come in and share the information about their career with the students.

This we hope to video tape as we begin to grow our library of career information for students.

Please check back as this project continues to develop.

Spotlight on Careers!!

We will be researching careers and sharing information about what we are learning on this blog. Stay tuned for more information!

The Occupational Outlook Handbook

This is one of the websites that we will be using to do our Career Investigation. Occupational Outlook Handbook

Thanks for the earlier comments. I will be opening comments section for a later date.

Career Assignment

Here are some Career Cluster Websites that you can use for researching the career clusters:
Career Education


Career Clusters

You can also use google (or any other search engine) and type in :
“Career Clusters” to help you locate careers for your assignment.

Learning is fun

Learning is Fun... really!
We have started a new year and moved to a new campus. This !
year, I hope to expand the web-log and use it as a tool for teaching students to work collaboratively...

Earth Day: Fact or Fiction

You have consumed a lot of information about” global warming" among other topics relating to nature and the Earth in various projects leading up to the LCMS Earth Day Celebration. You were asked to find three facts that you learned from the Earth Day activities and videos that you watched that you would be interested in researching via the Internet. This comment section will be open for one week for you to get your post up on the web-log. It will close on May 4th.Post one fact that you learned during the Earth Day activities (and leading up to it) that you question. Your job it to research this fact using the Internet and try to find out if there is evidence supporting this fact or if there is evidence that negates this fact.

(If you are having difficulty seeing the entire text, click Earth Day Fact or Fiction on the side bar)
Here is an example:

Fact: The fact I wanted to research was about melting glaciers. Are they really melting?

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0501/articles/mainarticle.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/22/nmelt22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/22/ixnewstop.html


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The key to this assignment to
(1) Show how you used the Internet/search engines to research your fact
(2) Show evidence that you are being intelligent consumers of information.

There are a lot of assertions out there on this and other issues. What believable evidence can you find to support or disprove the fact that you research?

Be sure to read the website and be able to report briefly on what it says!

Write your post in the comment section.

Career Investigation - Interview questions

You have six Career Investigations that you must complete for class. You may do two of the Career Investigations as interviews. The interviews must be written up and you findings summarized. The list of questions are suggestions for the interview. You can substitute a question if you have one that better suits your interview objective. Reminder: Complete sentences, spelling and punctuation counts)

1. What is the nature of the work that you do?
   
2. What are some of your job responsibilities?
   
3. How did you figure out what you wanted to do?
   
4. What are some of the skills needed to do this type of work?
5. What are the requirements or qualifications needed for this type of work?
6. What do you like best about your work?
   
7. What are challenges that you face?
   
8. Can you describe what a typical day is like for you when you are at work?
9. What are the working conditions for this type of occupation? (Travel, Overtime, Outdoors, time-frame etc.)
   
10. What things did you learn in school that helped you in college and in your career?
    
11. What academic skills are required for this type of work? (math, reading, science, etc.)
    
12. What are some of the barriers a young person might face if they were to pursue a career in this field?
    
13. What do you wish you had known earlier in you life that would have helped to perpare you for your profession or career?
    
14. How has technology impacted your profession?
    
15. How long have you worked in this field?
    
16. What new skills are you required to learn for your job?
    
17. How does this type of work relate to the economy?
    
18. How does this type of work relate to society as a whole?
    
19. How is globalization/outsourcing/off-shoring impacting this occupation?
    
20. What advice would you give to a person my age that is contemplating career choices?
    
21. Where could I find more information about this type of work?
    

“Take Your Child To Work Day”

You can do a report on your visit to your parent's worksite and count it as one of your Career Investigation assignments. Remember to write it up. Restate the question in your answer. Spelling, punctuation, handwriting, neatness counts. Type written is preferred.

1. What is the name of the company/business/organization?

2. Give a brief description of the company/business/organization.

3. How many employees?

4. Are there other branches? Are they in Florida? Other states? National? Transnational/Global?

5. Describe what this company/business/organization does.

6. Does the company have a website?

7. What is the URL for the website? (If permitted, look at the company website and describe the type of information found on the website.

8. Describe the job that you "job shadowed" Give examples of the daily responsibilities this person has.

9. Describe some decisions that the person you "job shadow" has to make?

10. What type of technology do you find in the workplace?

11. What are some of the software applications that are used in the workplace.

12. What are the education requirements for the position you "job shadowed?"

13. Describe 3 things that you leaned from this experience.

14. What are examples of related occupations?

15. Describe something you would like to know more about, based on your observations.

Top 10 Questions for NAHB

From the comments that students made on the blog about the Resource House, students have grouped their comments and concerns into catagories. We are going to invite the National Association of Home Builders is the group that built the Resource House to review our comments and concerns about this house and provide feedback on the issues that my 8th graders have identified concerning a house made from recycled materials. Here are their results posted in order of importance to the 8th graders:
_______________________________________________________________
Weather and Natural Disasters: Will this house hold up in a hurricane? What about a tornado? How does it weather over time? Does it rust faster? Would the roof blow away in a storm?

Money and cost issues: Is it too expensive for a middle class family to afford? Does the cost of the new technology in the appliances make it too expensive for people to afford?

Safety and Stability issues: How safe is a house like this? Does it hold up as well as a house built with regular materials?

Durability issues: If a regular family lives in this house will the house hold up to regular wear and tear? Has it aged well? What type of problems has they house had compared to regular houses?

Environmental Issues: Does it help solve environmental issues like global warming, trash in landfills, dependence on foreign oil etc?

Consumer Concerns: Will the house smell over time, does it fit in with the surrounding houses or can you tell after a while that it isn't made with the same materials. How many other houses like these have been built? How were the materials tested before building the house? How expensive is it to fix things when they break?

Energy and Power issues: How doe the price of solar energy compare to regular energy? Do you really save money in the long run? Is solar energy reliable? What happens when the sun doesn't shine or there is a storm? Will the solar panels blow away?

Consumer Acceptance: Are more houses being built like this?

Regulations: Does the Resource Conservation house have to be built according to government regulations?

Lifestyle: Can a family live a “normal” life in a house made with rec

Resource Conservation House

The video: "Resource Conservation House" shows a house that is built with recycled productcs. I have invited a representative from the NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) who was responsible for buidling the house to vist our weblog and read your comments about the house.

What are your thoughts, concerns, views about buidling houses with recycled materials. What questions do you have about a house like this? Would you want to buy a home made with recycled products in the future? Why? Why not?

Please post your student number and your initials to get credit for this post.

A F F L U E N Z A !

A point in the video, "Affluenza" stressed that :

Americans like to shop.

Many of those items end up in the trash.

In the 2nd video that we saw where

an entire house had been built with

RECYCLED MATERIALS.

Good idea or bad idea?

Would you want to live in this house?

Why or why not?

Are there some things

you liked about this house?

Are there some things

you didn't like about this house?

Are there some things

you think are important to consider?

Write a minimum of one paragraph

to discuss your point of view.

To get credit, be sure to include your student number and initials.

E a r t h D a y S o n g C o n t e s t ?

A couple of years ago, some of my students who were in band, formed a rock band. They practiced after school in the teacher’s lounge, playing their guitars and writing songs. They wanted to do a school wide song contest to encourage students to write songs and poems. It was a good idea but too close to the end of the school year and so it never happened. The idea was resurrected this year as a possible activity for Earth Day. So I posed the question to my second semester students. Would they be interested in doing a song contest that centered around the theme of the Environment and Earth Day for our upcoming Earth Day celebration and LCMS on April 27? Here are their responses:

Period two - 2

Period one - 1

Period three - 3

Period five - 5

Period Six - 6

Conclusion

C o n c l u s i o n