Friday May 31

Hey there, if you are getting concerned that the exam is coming up soon, you may want to read this article.

In other news, we continue to work towards finishing our About Me page for the final product.


As a part of that concern, we watched the first half of this video and I'm hoping the ideas take hold:




I think today we need to get a lot more specific in terms of what else we will need to complete this Unit.

I will also be conferencing with students about their marks and what they can do to improve them leading up to the end of the course.

Next week is June! Woot!

Thursday May 30

Ok, now ... today y'all need to email the teacher a draft version of the "About" part of the Portfolio. See yesterday's post about what it might look like.




via GIPHY

Wednesday May 29

Writing the About section of your Portfolio

In the notes, it's called a Bio Poem ... I'm working with "About" instead"

Tuesday May 28

I was preparing for today's class when I got an email and there was this:

Karma.

In any case, we will be poking around on that site today, and working on questions on "How SnapChat could hurt your career".

The questions for that article are here.

I will also conference about marks and outstanding sections of the CA with some students today, too.

Monday May 27

I was very disappointed to find out June 1 is not Friday today.

Ah well. We will move forward in our "All About Me" Unit.

Today was a bit of catch up for some students in the class.

There are some students in class that have been away for a while and today was their first day back. I walked the class though the unit and talked about the homework and the final product for this unit.

I shared a look at the LinkedIn and Blogger portfolios that I keep for professional purposes. I'm hoping that my students can have something as polished as they can by the end of this unit.

We also talked about Blogger, WordPress and LinkedIn being cost effective ways to get their profile done for this unit. They don't cost anything, but there are premium services offered. I am constantly offered to go to a paid model with LinkedIn, for example. However, I say no and don't pay for any one of the services.

We did watch this young man testify to why he uses WordPress in his online businesses:





Finally, I did another round of meetings about outstanding culminating activities and also did some conferenceing about updated marks. I will continue the conferenceing tomorrow and Wednesday this week.

Friday May 24

Today was a weird one.

We did chat about the first section of this article about "Does Education pay?" that I found when prepping for something else.

As this is my first year at this school, I was unaware that the event on the football field would be taking as many students away from my class as it did.

I will expect everyone to do the online response to the article from yesterday for homework.

Thursday May 23

Please email your answers to the email address in red on the side of the portable.

1.     What percentage of employers that CareerBuilder surveyed used social media to screen candidates for hiring?

2.     In a piece of writing of about a paragraph, tell me what you think about this line:

“I think it should be very clear to anyone old enough to be looking for a full-time job to understand that, given all the social media scandals, you should assume employers—or anyone else that might have a say in your livelihood—will see what you post.”

3.     In this time of “hyper connectedness” and some would say “oversharing”, do you have a right to privacy if your social media messages conflict with the messages of your employer? Why or why not?

4.     There are five really annoying online habits listed below. Of the five, which ones do you see as "the one" that would prevent someone from getting a full-time job after high school? What makes you think that?

5.     What if you were working at a restaurant as a server and you disagreed with someone much higher up in the same company? Do you have the right to voice your disagreement with them without consequence?

6.     If you do disagree with your employer or customer in public, is there anything to protect you from getting fired?

Wed May 22

Built into this unit are opportunites to look at different ideas that come up in class.

One such question that was asked in both Grade Eleven College classes today was "What are soft skills?"

I've used this article before to explain exactly that: Soft Skills to help your career"

The set of questions for this article are here:

1.     In the first ten lines, the author tries to explain what “soft skills” are. Can you rewrite his explanation into a definition that you would share with the Principal of the school?

2.     “If you are good at what you do, why does it matter if you argue and can’t get along with people at work. They should just listen to you because you’re good at your job.” Is a statement I have heard about this piece of writing before in my classes. Do you agree with this idea? Why or why not?

3.     In the Communication skills section of this article, it was mentioned that people need to be able to express the W5H to an employer. Where in your high school career has this idea been taught to you or tested?

4.     If you understand that our school environment is a preview of the working world, and by extension the office/ working environment, how well do you think you support the idea of a “friendly office culture” that you might see in this classroom?

5.     Being able to resolve conflict is a skill that most employers are looking for. Why, do you think that is?

Tuesday May 21

Today we did a couple of important things in class.

We started the final unit and outlined what specific things we will be doing in class everyday from now until exam time.

We got the unit outline on lovely purple paper and worked our way through a video and an article to get our "Minds On" for the learning that will be doing in this unit.

After assigning questions on the article "10 Skills Students all students need" - link is on the right- hand side of the blog, I conferenced very briefly with each student about the final touches of the CA.

At the end of the class, we peeked at the LinkIn profile of the teacher as an example of the final product for this unit.

Friday May 17

This is the last day of the CA for this class.

I'm working hard with submissions to help improve them - keep them coming!

Please be safe and come back on Tuesday in one piece, please!

Next unit is already up, we'll start it on Tuesday!

The reason for the season.

Thursday May 16

Today we are working / polishing up work on "Presentations" section for the CA.

Don't do this. This is not a good example.

Wed May 15

Today was the second in class writing day.

Keep writing!

Thursday and Friday are the Presentation Days.

Tuesday May 14

Today was the first day of in class piece of writing day.

Whoa, that was a mouth full.

Anyway, life is good and people were working.

It was all good

Monday May 13

Today was the final day of preparations for the In class writing part of the CA for this class.

Writing folders were gathered and it's ready for tomorrow!

Friday May 10

We were working in the library on the CA

Thursday May 9

Here is the presentation that we did. I was asked by a few people to show them how to turn a thesis into an introduction paragraph.

After that, people were to start finish working on their pieces of writing. I was hoping to see them submitted electronically throught the Brightspace.

Interviews continued after the presentation and through out the period.

Count down to the end of the semester is at 28.

Wed May 8

So I saw this event for Managing Money being run by the Burlington Public Library. It's free and nearby.

Go for it!

Today in class I was bringing the CA to the next step. Interviews and editing help for the pieces of writing we are doing next week. Some editing and a lot of "Talk to you tomorrows, Sir."

Make sure you get the CA research done - it is worth a lot of marks!

Tuesday May 7

Today we worked on the following to get ready for the second round of interviews for the Culminating Activity.

Your thesis for your piece of writing that we are going to be doing in class on May 14 and 15th.

Your research of your topic that you've been collecting for the last few classes.

Your draft version of your piece of writing. This would be a really big boost for you and your final In Class piece of Writing. Seriously, you should do this and upload it to the Communications Unit, Activity 3 inside the D2L area for this course.

This was from a presentation we did last week.

If you have already done all of this, I'm starting to post things we are going to be working on after the Victoria Day weekend on this site. You can peek at them, under the "All ABout Me Unit" subheading on the right side of the website.

Ok - get 'er done!

Friday and Monday May 6

Friday was a wash with only one student attending.

Well, we continued our countdown to the next conference for the CA. It's down to two days.

Work on the draft version and be able to upload it to the Communications Unit in the Brightspace page for this class.

It'll help me give some feedback to students. We're getting ready for the in-class writing days May 14th and 15th.

In any case, the sun was shining outside making us all wish for the summer to come faster.

I'm starting to get the last unit ready for us ... 31 classes left before the exams start!

Thursday May 2

Hmmm ... I'm not sure what happened there. I will try again on another wifi later on today.

Students should continue working on their CA and the D2L/Brightspace Communication Unit. I can't believe I need to remind people that marks are being earned through these units.

In any case, we made some progress today with a "How to submit Communications Unit Activity 2" powerpoint at the start of class. We then moved forward.

Wed May 1

Here is something else to try for us ... you can watch this video before answering.