My Tweetssetting : me dragging into homeroom after visiting my father in the hospital.
student : ”Miss, you look blue today.”
me : ”Yes, I am.”
student : “What’s wrong?”
me : “Someone I love is sick, and I’m worried about him.”
student : “I’m sorry.”
me : “Thank you.”
student : “Just remember, Miss, time heals all wounds.”
I just wrapped up a semester of my Advanced Web Development & Work-based Learning course, and for the first time, the students made web sites for actual clients and earned community service hours! They worked in teams and built web sites for non-profit organizations in the Dorchester community, and presented their sites and experiences at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline on January 17, who so graciously hosted us.
Many thanks to TechBoston for supporting the curriculum, recruiting the clients, and providing prizes for the top 3 teams. The teams were judged according to site design, teamwork, communication, and client satisfaction. By the end of the course, the students not only gained new web development skills, but improved their employability skills. The NWCET and SCANS standards are mapped to the activity.
I am looking forward to another semester and a new group of students and clients!
I am wrapping up here at the Staples HQ in Framingham. (I’ve been sick so at this time of the day, I tend to spiral downward, head-heavy!) Just spent the day listening to a number of great speakers about the education of our nation’s future IT professionals. Today’s IT industry assumes that its entry-level employees have basic computer skills such as word processing, data entry, and email and address book management. Essentially, tech skills are not enough to land job’s in the technology industry! Our emerging workforce needs employability skills above all, which allows young people to forge new careers with longevity, and not just jump from help desk to help desk. This is not really a ground-breaking revelation. What is new at this year’s forum are the statistics and studies that finally back up these claims. Now more than ever, our high schools and commnunity colleges need to change their technology curriculum to integrate and re-inforce employability skills such as teamwork, creative problem-solving, oral & written communication, listening, time and task prioritization, and adaptability in the face of unfamiliar problems. Too much of our focus has been on HOW to use an application, or HOW to get the right answer on a test. We need to measure the social and soft skills today’s employees need in order to compete in the technology industry.
“Technical skills get you the interview, but soft skills get you the job!”
I was able to procure a few gems as well today :
I have finally moved to a new host, dreamhost, re-uploaded my web sites, upgraded to this blog to WORDPress, and posted a new entry to this blog! It’s been too long!!
I’m off to the IT forum sponsored by BATEC tomorrow, but I am not feeling well so I hope my head is not too foggy to take it all in!
My juniors made PSA videos last spring and I published them to Google Video after my department hosted an in-school Film Festival. One of the Google videos about teen dating violence was recently viewed by the police force of El Paso, Texas, and they wanted a copy to incorporate into their teen violence training sessions. Cool!
My seniors created an audio time capsule for their class and I posted their MP3s into an “alumni” channel on Garageband.com. You can subscribe to it and have a listen via iTunes but I’ll embed it once I Gcast it. Oh yeah!
Highschooljournalism.org, which hosts school newspapers online (a GREAT tool I set up and introduced to our English department years ago), is now broadcasting school radio shows! A curriculum is provided as well.