Authenticity and Improvements

As the students finish up their tri-fold displays this week, the thing that I see missing from their presentations is some interactions with real people in real careers. All of the information they have gathered is from books and online resources. Earlier in the unit, each student did interview someone about their job but that was before we chose which personality career they were going to focus on. I did hear two groups talk about interviewing a few people and showing their video for their interactive presentation - but that never happened. I did show the Artistic group videos from Unitedstreaming.com but they ended up not using them either.

I ended up being gone when the students were working on the career resumes and did not get a chance to teach some of the Word skills that I wanted them to use: paragraph format, indents and styles. We ran out of time and I cut the portfolio activity from the assignment.

If I do this unit again next semester, here are some of the things that I would change:

1. Invite guest speakers to class
2. Wait and have the students conduct the interview with someone in their field after they have chosen their topic.
3. Show some of the unitedstreaming videos earlier in the unit.
4. Have them use the "Best Jobs of the 21st Century" book for data for Excel project because some of the research took too long.
5. Walk them through the first Excel assignment and check for understanding as we go along.
6. I would wait and do this unit at the end of the semester when the students have more technology skills available to them.