Future in Progress Web Screens

The following represents a brief selection of screens from our Future in Progress web screens.

Dashboard, a landing screen with options and a student’s current points:

Career Wheel, career landing page, shows possible career categories colored based on student interest:

 

Category Page, students can rate their interest in different careers and see a breadth of possibilities:

 

Career Detail, Student can compare their preferences to those of average professionals in a career, details about what the career entails, and videos or photos from local people within the selected career:

Team Project – Student Career Choice

 Project overview

Our group is hoping to propose a long-term support system to help high school students in urban public schools make informed career decisions. Specifically, we hope to increase teen awareness, exposure, reflection, and planning of career goals and decisions. We believe that by addressing the issue of insufficient support for students with career planning, our system could have longer term effects on high school dropout rates, job security and satisfaction, and the skills gap.[1]

Inspiration + community work

We were each inspired by personal experiences either with ourselves or close friends or family members struggling to make decisions in high school about what career path to follow. We are encouraged by the variety of programs that exist (such as internships, job shadowing, mentorship programs, career counselors, and career focused curriculum); however, we expect that most, if not all of these programs are being cut from low income, urban schools with diminishing budgets.

Two programs in Pittsburgh really stood out as positive examples of how young adults could get support with career planning, The Neighborhood Academy and the Bloomfield and Garfield Corporation’s youth education program. The Neighborhood Academy is an independent, college preparatory school in Pittsburgh. It provides college preparation for students for grades 8 to 12. Specifically, the school targets students with financial needs in order to “ break the cycle of generational poverty.”[2] The Bloomfield and Carfield Corporation offers an out-of-school youth employment program that works with adults between the ages of 17 and 21 to gain work experience in a variety of career opportunities, such as financial, medical, and technological fields. [3]

While both of these programs support students by helping them to build career and college readiness, and have also had a positive impact on the community, we believe that their models lack scalability. While we are unsure what form our project will take (policy, curriculum, toolkit, website, etc.), we hope to craft a solution that is easily distributed and available to a broad range of students without having to rely on a large operating budget.

Work to date

Our group has met several times to discuss and build a research plan that includes interviews, card sorting, and a cultural probe. We are planning to talk to high school juniors, parents, and high school guidance counselors to gain perspective on the issue from each of our key stakeholders. Additionally, we hope to speak to subject matter experts in the community (such as Jeremy from Propel) who may have interesting insight about challenges and opportunities.

The primary research questions are:

• What are existing support systems to help high school students make career decisions? How effective / ineffective are they?

• What are the needs of each stakeholder (counselors, students, parents)?

By understanding the current support systems and the needs of each stakeholder we will be able to move forward with a clear direction and specific problem to solve through our final project.

View our research protocol here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e9_nFVFifxJoMbPlVoM7GB957c3CJ9o1KXdB_4bqqVY/edit?usp=sharing

Secondary Research

Along with planning our primary research we have continued our secondary research of current programs and tools. We found a variety of tools that are currently being used by schools and the military to assess career aptitude.

• ASVAB: “The ASVAB is a timed multi-aptitude test, which is given at over 14,000 schools and Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) nationwide and is developed and maintained by the Department of Defense.”[4]

• Career Test: find your destined career based on a series of personality questions.[5]

Proposed Direction

While we do not have a specific product or service in mind for our final proposal we have a number of principles we hope to fulfill. We also plan to narrow and specify our project direction, and extend our list of principles once we have completed our stakeholder research.

Principles:

• Accessible to a broad range of students, especially those in underserved, urban neighborhoods

• Limited cost to produce, maintain, and distribute

• Long-term support system, hopefully something students could be introduced to in late middle school and use throughout high school and possibly college

• Could be a tool for students, counselors, or parents, or a combination of stakeholders, depending on the needs we find

 

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Team: Salwa Al-Mannai, Robyn Hammond, Molly Johnson, Alex Krysiak, Ana Vazquez-Trejo

 

[1] See our proposal for more details — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Th1F2DQy4tcurW8GvQPOUqIdzTguZE9siZybCrx1zzM/edit?usp=sharing

[2] www.theneighborhoodacademy.org

[3] http://bloomfield-garfield.org/youth/education/

[4] http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab

[5] http://www.careerpath.com/

Large scale tablet initiatives leaving teachers behind?

There has been a huge push in the past decade to bring technology into schools. It can help teach technology literacy, the skills students will need when they work in a laptop and tablet infested world, connect students to the vast amount of knowledge and tools on the internet, and enable more tailored learning environments that let children work at their own pace. However, while programs are popping up all over the country and tablets, cameras, laptops, and video recorders are being introduced into elementary and secondary school classrooms, teachers and technology specialists are feeling left behind.

When large scale one to one tablet programs are implemented there is usually a series of professional development workshops that introduce teachers to the technology and teach basic skills. However, teachers are worried “that technology [will] undercut the connection to the student that makes teaching feel rewarding and worthwhile” [1], and these basic workshops do nothing to quell those fears. One teacher who was instructing teachers on the use of tablets explained that it took him nearly 3 years to figure out the correct routine to use when he introduced one to one tablets in his classroom.

This is scary for teachers. Many teachers in their 40s and 50s and have been successfully teaching for 20 or 30 years and yet are being asked to turn their pedagogical method on its head to make room for a screen between them and their students.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think bringing technology into the classroom can be a really positive thing, students and many teachers are very excited about it. And while I don’t think distributing tablets to each student is necessarily the correct approach, that is not what this blog post is about. What I really think we need is more support and better instruction for the teachers who are interested, but intimidated by bringing these technologies into their classrooms. Teachers need to feel comfortable enough to feel in control and teach their students, as well as understand and accept that there may be students in the room (especially in middle and high school classrooms) who know the technology better than they do.

While there are many ways to address this issue, I believe BetterLesson, a start-up out of Boston, has created an interesting product that could help address this issue. BetterLesson is not focused on bringing technology into the classroom, but rather on helping teachers find and share lesson plans with other teachers around the country. These lessons may or may not utilize technology. The most positive aspects of this site are that it connects teachers with other teachers, it doesn’t feel like lessons or requirements coming from policy makers or administrators, and that it promotes discussion, commenting, and constructive criticism from peers [2]. I think a system with similar principles needs to be enacted when tablet programs are being piloted. Teachers need support in figuring out how to incorporate these devices into their lessons, they need a voice and control over how prevalent or minimal a presence the devices have in the room, and they need to be given the tools to confidently remix their older lessons and create new lessons that take full advantage of the affordances of the new technology.

Teachers are not inept, many use tablets in their own lives and have the skills to use the variety of devices that are popping up in classrooms. Skill based workshops on how to adjust settings and input grades are not the primary issues with introducing the technology. A system that facilitates collaboration and discussion about the most effective ways to design lessons that support student learning and integrate technology would help teachers innovate with new teaching methods and give them the tools and space to explore new methods and support one another as new tools are introduced.

 — Molly Johnson, IxD

 

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html?pagewanted=all

2. betterlesson.com

The Learning Labs Project

I’m a nerd. I love libraries. And while they may not change the world in the same way as AIDs research and clean water availability, I think they are an extremely important part of a community, especially for its youth.

Learning Labs Project

In 2012 the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the MacArthur Foundation awarded 30 US public libraries and museums grant money to build Learning Labs for teens. The majority of the awarded labs are still far from complete, but a number of innovative spaces have been popping up around the country. These spaces were to be designed after The Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. The library center has set up an Innovation lab where they teach workshops on 3D printing, laser cutting etc. check out their blog here.

The Labs @ CLP

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh was one of the libraries awarded grant money and has been building a robust lab space for teens where they can work on their own projects with support from artist and designer mentors or take part in workshops that focus on a wide variety of subjects from filmmaking to programing and physical computing. The lab gives students a place to hang out and explore their own interests away from home and school, both locations where teens are required to spend time.

Many of the workshops that The Labs @ CLP host are in partnership with community institutions like the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, HackPittsburgh.org, the list goes on and on. These partnerships provide great community outreach, making teens more aware of the resources in the city, and expose teens to adults and mentors with a variety of skill sets, perspectives, and career paths.

I think spaces like this are integral to creating a culture of innovation and preparing students for 21st century lives and careers. They get students into a safe and productive environment after school and teach fun, interesting, and hugely relevant skills that teens are often unlikely to learn in a traditional classroom. I am excited to see the other projects that come of the Learning Labs Project.

 

— Molly Johnson, IxD