Organizes ideas and communicates orally. Thinking Skills: Thinks creatively, makes decisions, solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn and reason. Creative Thinking Generates new ideas. Decision Making Specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternative. Problem Solving Recognizes problems and devises and implements plan of action. Seeing Things in the Mind's Eye Organizes and processes symbols, pictures, graphs, objects, and other information. Knowing How to Learn Uses efficient learning techniques to acquire and apply new knowledge and skills. Reasoning Discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or more objects and applies it in solving a problem. Personal Qualities: Responsibility Exerts a high level of effort and perseveres toward goal attainment. Self-Esteem Believes in own self-worth and maintains a positive view of self. Sociability Demonstrates understanding, friendliness, adaptability, empathy, and politeness in group settings. Self-Management Assesses self accurately, sets personal goals, monitors progress, and exhibits self control. Integrity/Honesty Chooses ethical courses of action. L 19 0 0 o _ o SCANS Competencieseffective workers can productively use: Resources: Identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources. Time Selects goal-relevant activities, ranks them, allocates time, and prepares and follows schedules. Money - Uses or prepares budgets, makes forecasts, keeps records, and makes adjustments to meet objectives. Material and Facilities - Acquires, stores, allocates, and uses materials or space efficiently. Human Resources - Assesses skills and distributes work accordingly, evaluates performance and provides feedback. Interpersonal Skills: Works with others. Participates as a Member of a Team Contributes to group effort. Teaches Others New Skills - Shares strategies, mentors others. Serves Clients/Customers Works to satisfy customers' expectations. Exercises Leadership Communicates ideas to justify position, persuades and convinces others, responsibly challenges existing policies. Negotiates Works toward agreements involving exchange of resources, resolves divergent interests. Works with Diversity Works well with men and women from diverse o 0 backgrounds. Information: Acquires and uses information. Acquires and Evaluates Information Organizes and Maintains Information Interprets and Communicates Information Uses Computers to Process Information Systems: Understands complex inter-relationships within social, organizational, and technological systems. Understands Systems Knows how social, organizational, and technological systems work and operates effectively with them. Monitors and Corrects Performance Distinguishes trends, predicts impacts on system operations, diagnoses deviations in systems' performance, and corrects malfunctions. Improves or Designs Systems Suggests modifications to existing systems and develops new or alternative systems to improve performance. Technology: Works with a variety of technology-related techniques. Selects Technology Chooses procedures, tools, or equipment including computers and related technologies. Applies Technology to Tasks Understands overall intent and proper procedures for setup and operation of equipment. Maintains and Troubleshoots Equipment Prevents, identifies, or solves problems with equipment, including computers and other technologies. 13 Taking our salon bookkeeping example further, the project can be set up so that students have opportunities to develop and practice many of the SCANS skills and competencies. The assignment might require that: Students work in teams to develop or practice interpersonal skills including clear communication, listening, teamwork, and leadership. Bookkeeping examples be presented in computer spreadsheet format to employ the appropriate use of technology. Project-Based Learning Involves Students in Problem-Solving Investigations Using Real-World Resources Real-world problems don't have a single right answer; there are usually a wide range of options that need to be sorted and evaluated. Because of this, students need to gather and synthesize information from a wide range of real-world resources (e.g., workplace experts, written materials, Internet information). In addition, they evaluate the quality, reliability, and biases inherent in the information before they can make decisions and develop a final product. In our bookkeeping example, students might be asked to solve a problem by researching different methods for keeping financial records in a salon. To gather this information, they might consult accountants, salon owners/managers, the Internet, written materials, and other resources. After evaluating options and