1. Students reflect on the skills they have acquired throughout the course and make connections to potential career paths of interest through personal reflections, exposure to other role models, and CS and IT career exploration.
2. Students identify their long-term career goals and potential possible paths to follow in order to achieve those goals.
3. Students connect their collaboration experience to the skills needed to be employed in a digital technology career.
In this section students will watch other videos of Georgia Tech students in CS and learn about some of the areas they are working on within the field of computer science. We recommend playing 1 video and using a Think-Pair-Share process for the video discussion, so different students have enough time to think and possibly make personal connections to these stories before sharing. During the think-pair-share process, as a first step give each students the chance to write down their thought, before sharing with a peer. This helps facilitate discussions.
In this section students will be able to reflect on their progress throughout unit 4, complete the Unit 4 portfolio organizer and use that information to update their html resume one last time.
Lastly, students can use the IDT portfolio and update resume, and use them to explore existing CS and IT careers.
Activity 1 (60 minutes)
Meet a Georgia Tech computer science student!
Teachers will tell the students they will have another opportunity to learn more about the work some CS students are doing at GT. Students will watch 2 short video interviews of Georgia Tech computer science students and answer a couple of questions about the videos. The teacher can write the questions on the board ahead of the activity, or give them to the students on a sheet, and ask them to watch the videos and answer the questions individually first. After the students have watched the videos and finish completing their own personal answers, have them pair with another student and discuss their responses. The teacher can finish the exercise by having a whole group discussion with the students about their thoughts.
Meet a Georgia Tech CS Student Video 1
Meet a Georgia Tech CS Student Video 2
Questions:
1. For you, what was the most compelling or interesting thing about any of these students' stories? Why?
2. One of the students mentions how he thinks computer science can be a bridge among careers. Did you learn anything new or surprising about how computer science could be related to other occupations?
3. In the stories, the students talk about computer science skills that they considered important. Did you see any relationship between those skills they mentioned and the work you have done in class this year?
Activity 2 (Budget 60 minutes)
Students complete their IDT Portfolio Organizer for Unit 3.
Students will complete their IDT Portfolio Organizer Unit 3 at this time. Teachers will remind students there are no right or wrong answers and that the assignment will not be graded.
Students update their html resume for Unit 3.
Lastly, students can take this time to update their html resumes and add the skills they recognize to have acquired during unit 3 (these are their answers to question 1 in their unit 3 portfolio organizer).
Students identify their interests and explore careers related to their interests and goals. Have students do a T-P-S activity using the Skills and Interests Organizer. Afterwards, students can share with another peer the information on the sheets. While sharing, students can edit and add any other information they would like to their sheets. Teacher asks a couple of student pairs to share with the class.
Students will then explore in pairs the College Board Computer and Information Sciences Major and Career Search website. In this website students can explore majors and careers in CS and IT. For majors, students should expand the Science, Math and technology field, and then expand the Computer and Information Sciences Fields. For careers, students can expand the Science, Math and technology field, and then expand the Computers and Math fields.
Students should feel free to explore different majors or career choices with their peer based both on their identified skills and interests. Students should also be completing their Major and Career Organizer using information from the website.
Activity 3 (Budget 60 minutes)
Using their Major and Career Organizer students construct their ideal resume for a hypothetical CS/IT major. They do that by identifying courses and actions they might take to pursuit that path. Students will use their update html resume and using the information they gathered in the Major and Career Organizer they will add the following information to their ideal resume (with a different color font):
- They will add an Objectives section to their resume and include in it they desired CS/IT major or career, or the one that could potential be more interesting to them.
- Skills they currently not have but they need to learn in order to learn more about that field (this can be added in different sections of the resume such as education, work experience, extracurricular or volunteer activities).
- HS courses that would be helpful to take in order to pursuit this career (add to the Education section of the resume).
Students can work in pairs for this activity (each student would work on their resume, but they can actively discuss with peers as they complete this process). The teacher can choose to either do individual checks on the students work or do a whole group discussion of a couple of examples students might be willing to share.
Note: The teacher should engage the students in exploring what type of organizations and clubs (such as FBLA) are available in their school and would help students enhance a CS/IT focused or ideal resume. It is also important for the teacher to help students identify other courses in their school, that students can enroll in, and that would help them supplement their ideal resume.
The teacher can choose to have a closing whole class discussion about how their current resumes looks different from their ideal resumes, and what things they included in their ideal resumes that would let them get closer to their CS/IT College or Career Goals.
Teacher has a closing conversation with students about student progress throughout the year:
1. Teacher can ask the students about things their learned in each unit (from 1 to 4) and highlight their learning gains and growth throughout the year. Teachers should be explicit in showing students how many different abilities and IT/CS skills they have gained in a single year.
2. Teachers can ask this section by asking the students about their favorite and most challenging activity they did this year.
Activity 4 OPTIONAL
Students share their final developed app with others.
Students will exchange or share their developed apps, allowing multiple people to play their game. The parameters of this exercise are completely up to the discretion of the teacher. Time and schedules will determine what is possible for each class and teacher. That said, the gold standard in PBL sees students sharing their work with an authentic audience whenever possible. They have been working hard on their app, and they deserve a chance to share it with an audience. Privacy concerns and technical safeguards at the school may prevent students from sharing their apps outside of their classroom walls. If, however, it is possible to share the game outside of the class, students can benefit from and have a sense of accomplishment if they present or share their creations with an authentic audience.
IDT Portfolio Organizer Unit 3 (Student Worksheet)
Skills and Interests Organizer (Student Worksheet)
College Board Career & Majors Search (Student Resource)
Major and Career Organizer (Student Worksheet)