EPSY590 Activity 1

EPSY 590 Activity 1
Networking Project

Link to Forum: Ron's EPSY590 Project
Description
Goal
Materials & Resources Used
Procedure Followed
Actual Outcome

Description: My project is a vocational one. At my school we have a vocational component to our curriculum. My project is to use Moodle to create a discussion board for the students to interact with professionals in various careers. This would be a weeklong assignment with a new participant every week. This project would be used to fulfill the career exploration part of the curriculum. They will need to ask specific questions, as well as questions that interest them about the career that we are discussing during the week. The students will then be required to use the information provided by the expert to write a report on their findings. If this is successful for my class it could also be used by other teachers at my school. For the purposes of this class a network administrator will be my career expert. I am going to put a post on www.teachers.net as well as www.tappedin.org in the vocational and technology section as well as the vocational section to look for student participants. If I don’t find any student participants I have a niece and nephews that will participate in the student roles.

Post: Career Exploration

Posted by Ron Folkens on 7/14/07

I am seeking a vocational class that is willing to
particiapate in a career exploration project. This is
geared for high school level students. Your students will
be required to participate in a discussion with someone in
a technology related field. The project will run from
July 23rd through July 27th. Please respond if you are
interested or have questions.

Goals: To create a forum where experts in a vocation can discuss with students specific aspects of their vocation.

To use online forums to gain participants for this project.

Materials & Resources Used:Moodle Forum, Project Swithboard at Teachers.net, www.tappedin.org in the vocational and technology section as well as the vocational section, Amber Folkens (An Account Administrator at an Investment Bank), Students, www.bls.gov/oco, www.careers.org, www.asvabprogram.com.

Procedure Followed: Posts were made at both www.teachers.net as well as www.tappedin.org in the vocational and technology section as well as the vocational section to look for student participants.

My vocation expert was to post a brief job description the day before the students started their participation.

The students then asked questions that would fulfill the requirements of the assignment as well as their own interests. The vocation expert was instructed to answer students questions but not to volunteer additional information. I planned on adding a few posts to get the discussion moving along.

The students were then required to write a career report based upon what they learned from the career expert and to supplement that with information that they could find from the web site.

Actual Outcome: The goal of creating a forum where students could intereact with an expert was successful. Students were able to interact with a person who is an expert in a vocational area. They were able to complete their reports with the information that the expert provided them.

The goal to use online forums to seek participants was unsuccessful. In the future I may cast a wider net over more forums to get volunteers for networking activities.

Difficulties that I had were that I was unable to get volunteers for my students so I had to use my nieces and nephews. My first volunteer career expert was unable to participate at the last minute, but I had an alternate planned and she was able to step in a replace him. If I were to do this in the future I would have a list of alternates that could contact if someone fell through. Another difficulty that I had was teaching the students how to use Moodle from a distance. This wouldn't be a difficulty in the future because my class would be present. The Moodle server was extremly slow while the students were writing their reports and they expressed frustration at trying to access information that they needed to complete the assignment. If I were using this in my regular classroom I would have delayed this part of the assignment and worked on something else for the two days during which this occured.

Last updated: 31 July 2007