MidPoint Evaluation

1. What year are you?
1. Freshmen – 9
2. Sophomore – 3
3. Junior – 2
4. Senior – 2
2. Do you think the keyboarding practice this term has been helpful?
1. Yes – 9
2. Somewhat – 6
3. No – 1
3. Which skill in Microsoft Word was the most beneficial to learn this term? (multiple answers are allowed)
1. Font formatting – 0
2. Tables – 12
3. Borders – 7
4. Styles – 4
5. Indents – 7
6. Numbering – 4
7. Format Painter – 9
8. Paragraph spacing – 1
9. Other: Track Changes – 2
4. Which statement(s) best describe your opinion about conducting research for the career project (multiple answers allowed).
1. I learned a lot about career choices through my research – 11
2. I did not enjoy the career research – 1
3. The career research was easy – 5
4. Researching the career information was too difficult and the information was hard to understand – 0
5. I like using the pathfinders provided by the Librarian – 10
6. I would prefer to do my own research on careers and not use the pathfinders. – 2
7. I shared the information I researched during the Career Fair – 13
8. I did not share the information I researched during the Career Fair.
9. Other – 4:Learned some what about our careers, Didn’t help my decision in finding a job, It made me think about what I want to do with my careers in my future, The career research wasn’t too hard, or too easy

5. Evaluation how well your group worked together on the career project

This statement is …	False	Partly true	True
Everyone contributed to the research	0	2	14
Everyone contributed to the poster board or interactive project	2	0	14
Everyone contributed during the presentation at the Career Fair	2	5	9

6. Please rate your understanding of the following Excel Skills

	I still have difficulty with this skill	I need some help with this skill	I am comfortable with this skill	I could teach another student this skill
Formatting the spreadsheet	0	2	10	4
Writing a formula	0	1	10	5
Creating a graph	0	2	7	7

7. On a scale of 1-5 rate your teach on the following items:

	1 Poor	2 Just Ok	3 Good	4 Very Good	5 Excellent
Knowledge of technical skills	0	0	2	4	10
Availability for help	0	0	3	6	7
Feedback give to you about your progress	0	2	1	10	3
Ability to teach new skills	0	1	1	4	10
Friendliness	0	0	2	4	10
Motivates me to learn	0	0	5	6	5

8. What suggestions do you have for how this entire career project could be improved in the future?

1. Nothing
2. More time to do research and maybe more to the point topics... The topics assigned for this recent project were broad
3. The presentation seemed chaotic during lunch
4. I think that more sites should be available on the library thing
5. I think that it was done really well, but it could be better if we could choose somewhat what careers we wanted to research.
6. This could be improved by giving time for more research. if you have more information, then there would be more to put on the project and the presentation.
7. Maybe more interactive. Find other things for different groups to do.
8. No presentation to school. Most people didn't really care. Instead, present to classmates.
9. Research more careers than two. Get different information about each career. That’s about it. It was good.
10. Maybe have the groups have a little bit more time to actually put together the poster board. like you could have a "poster board day"
11. I think that we could have the same thing happen, basically, but spend more time on the report, the speech/ presenting part.
12. I thought it all worked out fairly well. Its not gonna be perfect as thats impossible for any ideas in school but you basically did it the best way we could and we all worked together and learned plenty of things and then were able to share those with the school (while giving out candy as well).
13. I think that maybe next year or whenever it is done again, that more research should be done on the different jobs. The that my group provided was not very exhaustive
14. It was pretty good.
15. It could be improved if the students gave more creative ideas. Everybody else are almost same; doing PowerPoint, poster board. But, there were some creative ones, like playing guitar, bring cookie, and tickets.

9. What recommendation do you have the teacher of how she could tech this unit differently in the future?

1. No, none what so ever
2. For me i did not need the Microsoft office help but maybe for some people, we could have touched on word, excel, and power point a little bit more.
3. Focus more on teaching the skills rather than so much emphasis on the project.
4. more progress reports
5. I don't really have any recommendations. The teacher did well.
6. This would be better if we had time to practice the presentation before and make a script or something so that we know what we should say to people who come to look at our project
7. You’re doing great, lots of vocal energy. Maybe a few field trips (educational) to learn about computers.
8. No detailed research on a couple specific topics, but instead, several more general topics, so we can discover more jobs without having to research a job we find out we don't like.
9. I think it was very well taught.
10. i don't have really any recommendations for you.
11. I think she taught it well, but could explain the project more accurately in the beginning.
12. About the same answer as #8. It wasn't "perfect" but I can't really think of another way it could have been done so good job!
13. Stress that more research should be done on the specific careers that a group chooses to cover.
14. I would like to learn the skills in a more linear format.
15. I think project was a good one. Maybe doing other project in the future will be good.

10. If students had the CHOICE to help the teacher choose a topic for future projects in Computer Applications, which of the following topics interests you the most? (multiple answers and suggestions encouraged)

1. Teen Issues (drinking, smoking, dating, etc.) - 12
2. Athletic topics (team stats, steroid use, sports promotions) - 7
3. Discovering new technologies (podcasting, video, blogs, Web 2.0 tools, IM, Free software, Lego Programming) - 4
4. Famous People (historical, political, music, etc..) - 4
5. Pop Culture of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s - 4
6. The History of … (music topic: Rock-n-Roll, historical event: famous war, Invention: TV, etc) - 8
7. Everyone gets to choose their own topics - 11

Career Fair Today!!!!

Today my Computer Applications students hosted a mini-career fair in the lobby of our school at lunch. It was fun, hectic and full of energy - basically - organized chaos. The class was split into 6 groups and each group researched how careers can be grouped into personality types.

Today, the groups presented their information to the student body. To entice students to stop by the kiosks we placed bowls of candy at each table. We also offered a raffle prize - so if someone stayed and listened to the presentation they would receive a raffle ticket to win "A future career organizational kit" (complete with jump drive, pencils/pens, scissors, and a cool pencil pouch!). We had a pretty good turn out. Lots of kids took the "personality test" to determine their category and visited the kiosks. Several teachers at my school stopped by to ask the students questions about what they learned. A student reporter from the school paper took pictures and interview students for an upcoming article. My ARP is focused on engaging students with authentic assignments. The students will participate in a survey this week to get their impressions of the activity. Overall I am pleased with their efforts.

View pictures of our event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/colettec/sets/72157594586847731/

Photo Gallery

Working on Career Projects in class:

www.flickr.com

Reviewing my Desired Goals

I pulled out my UbD project plan to look over my Desired Goals of my career unit:

• Oregon Department of Education career related learning standards:
• Students will develop skills to assess personal characteristics, interests, abilities, and strengths.
• Students will develop skills in identifying, evaluating, and using a variety of resources for exploring personal, educational, and career choices.
• National Educational Technology standards for students:
• NETS*S #3: Students use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology-enhanced models, prepare publications, and produce other creative works.
• NETS*S #4: Students use telecommunication to collaborate, publish and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences
• NETS*S #5: Students use technology tools to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of resources.

I decided to do a quick check of how I am doing on meeting some of these goals:

• This past week my students did a great job of using technology tools to locate and collect information and a little bit of evaluation - but I think I will focus a blog topic on that.
• Students will start to prepare some type of documentation and an interactive component of their Career kiosk this week.
• We are using wikispaces for collaborative planning of the career projects. Maybe I could encourage the students to seek out resources by experts through email or listservs.
• The students took a personality career survey and identified which traits matched particular careers. They also used the Librarians pathfinder to locate information on careers. I think they need to look outside of the Internet for more sources: interviews, primary documents, videos on unitedstreaming, etc.
• I'm still a little unsure of how specific technology skills are developing. I need to find a better way to assess this in an authentic manner.
• The groups are still a little uneasy around each other. I was hoping blogging would help the communication issues - I will encourage more communication on the wiki and Moodle.
• I feel a little uneasy about the progress so far. Its going OK - but I don't yet see the "excitement" of making an authentic project yet. I think it will help when they start assembling the kiosk and making the interactive component. We'll see ...
  

Tapping other resources

I am so thankful for my school Librarian who helped put together a pathfinder of links for my students to use as they begin their career research.

The class was divided into 6 groups - one group for each career personality trait: realistic, investigative, social, enterprising, artistic, and conventional (from John Holland). I had each student take a career self-assessment from http://eslmi03.esc.state.nc.us/soicc/planning/c1a.htm and then placed students into groups by one of their top personality groups. (Watching the interactions in the personality groups is a psychological study in itself!!).

One of my overall goals is from NETS*S Students use technology tools to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of resources. The Librarian directed the students to Internet sites that had currenty career information (see below) but also encouraged the students to use print and video resources (unitedstreaming.com). Giving the students a jumping off point encouraged them to start with authentic sources and prevented them from googling their career choice and coming up with lots of unwanted websites.

The next day the groups met together and each student shared with their group where they got some information, and briefly evaluated the site for accuracy and ease of use. It was great to see some kids who were floundering the first day actually take th advice of their classmates and use those sites.

I've encouraged each of the groups to explore 6-10 careers in their category and include careers that do and do not require a college education.

The initial research class periods went well and except for one group - everyone has already researched at least 6 careers - we are off to a good start.

Site	Description
America's Career InfoNet	A gateway site. Gives customized Occupation Profile reports; includes wage estimations. Gives links to sites about specific careers.
Bureau of Labor Statistics	Gateway site from the U.S. Dept. of Labor.
California Occupational Guides	Select the letter of your occupation.
CareerZone	Provides information on 900 occupations.
collegeboard.com	Careers section. Especially good at telling you what to expect & how to prepare.
Exploring Occupations: Careers	Information on over 200 careers. Especially good at supplying relevant career links. (Canadian)
Alberta Occupational Profiles	In depth information on specific careers. Note: salaries are in Canadian dollars. Search by title, interest, subject or industry.
Job Profiles.org	Delve into 9 groupings of careers to find your career choice.
JobStar Central	Supplies many links to specific career web sites.
Monster: Job Profiles	A not-so-usual list of jobs & their description
Occupational Employment Statistics	Employment and wage estimates for over 800 occupations. Click here for a PDF file of "Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2005" found on this page.
Occupational Outlook Handbook	In case you missed it earlier, here is the "gold standard" in occupation information.
Oregon Career Information System	Access this extensive database from Multnomah Co. Library. You'll need your public library barcode number for online use. Or go inside the Beaverton Library to use it.
The Riley Guide	Links to particular career sites. "A-Z Index" is the easiest way to find your particular career.Be sure to click on "Salary Guides and Guidance."
SchoolFinder: Career Categories	A Canadian site giving information about many careers. Be sure to click on topics in the orange tool bar!

Direct Instruction - Word skills

Today's lesson had two goals:

1. Students wrote a survey to ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career.
2. Skills focus: Word formatting, numbering, indents, and styles.

Using the career questionaire as the topic, I asked students to brainstorm and write questions they could ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career. I used this lesson to teach some specific skills in Word:

• How to write their name of the paper: View / header and footer / type name and assignment name
• Quickly review keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S=save, Ctrl+Z=Undo, Ctrl+B=Bold
• Using the "gutter" to select one line or a paragraph
• Identifying the indent markers when you choose number formatting
• Purpose of styles, how to apply and modify them.
• Using line spacing for questionaire.

I ran out of time. On Monday I will follow up with customizing numbering styles and how to use the indent markers.

Since this format of teaching Word skills is new to me I feel that I need to make sure the students have reference information to refer to when I introduce a new concept. I have decided to add a page to our Career wiki for specific skills (ie: definitions, how to's) and add additional resources for more assistance. I will direct student to the wiki when I introduce a skill and I will base future vocabulary quizzes on this material @ http://p6compapps.wikispaces.com/Word

Career Theme - concept maps

The six week unit for my ARP will be focused on exploring careers. To introduce the topic I asked the students if money or education was not an issue, what three careers would they want to do in the future (thanks Melissa for the idea!). It was fun to go around the room and hear the results. I found it revealing and it already gave me insights into the personalities of the students in my class. Originally I had planned to have the students make concept maps (using Inspiration) to detail the various positive and negative attributes associated with careers - but since the mood was so light-hearted and fun I changed the assignment.

I asked each student to make a concept map the answered the question: The "best" career would include ... what? Students then brainstormed attributes like: I would be in charge, I would help people, I would make lots of money. I allowed students time to format their concept map with images if they wanted. They printed a copy to turn in.

My plan is to save these concept maps and use them at the end of the unit to see if they still agree with these statements after they have spent 5 weeks exploring careers. Once again, I found the activity revealing and has helped me get a better sense of who these students are.