Week 6 - Project update

I just wanted to post an update on my project idea. I am going to focus on a career project for my 8th grade students. I currently have my students work on career PowerPoint presentations and present them to the class. In the past I have had students learn about and work on creating resumes and occasionally I have discussed the importance of interview skills. I want to combine these activities, and possibly a few more, to create one large career project.

We will spend time in class learning about researching careers, creating resumes, and interview skills. Students will then be given a career (or they may be allowed to choose their own) and they research and find answers to questions about that career to create a PowerPoint presentation to show to the class. The students will use the skills they learned about resumes to design a resume for a job in that given career field. They will then use the information they learned about interview skills and participate in a mock interview for that job. All parts of the project will be evaluated by rubrics, none of which have been created yet.

I'm not really sure about all of the details, but hopefully they will be worked out soon. Let me know if you have any suggestions to help make this a more educational, entertaining, and technological project for my students.

LoTi Levels

This past week in class we had a more indepth discussion on the LoTi levels. Prior to class we had to take a survey in the LoTi Lounge to help determine our levels of technology use. My current LoTi level was a 3 for Infusion - I hope after this class I will be able to improve my level of technology implementation. My Personal Computer Use intensity level was a 6. I was not surprised by this as I teach in a computer lab and use computers every day. My Current Instructional Practices intensity level was a 3. I'm not sure if I completely understand this particular area, but if I am thinking in the right direction I should working on improving my CIP level.

As I worked on the web page examples assignment I found it hard to find lessons using technology that were related to my area without just using programs like Microsoft Office, for example. I found myself using lessons that focused on other subject areas, such as history and science, that used different types of technology to complete the assignment. I think it would actually be a good way to do cross-curricular work in my business education computer lab.

I have at least one idea for a cool tool demo. Every year I use a career website with my 8th grade students that allows them to take a personality test and then it matches their personalities with careers. The students are then able to view and research different careers. Then it lets the students create a car and drive down a highway with career questions and other information. It's called "Drive of Your Life" and the website is www.driveofyourlife.org.

At this point I am not sure about project ideas. I really don't have any idea which way to even go with this yet. I am continuing to think about this issue and hope to have something soon. Wish me luck!

My first blog

I'm just trying this out to make sure it works. I hope you enjoyed reading these two sentences.