O*NET: Free Career Source

by Renee Tonquest
CTE Cluster Specialist
Health Science

Working over the past few months with the development of our new Career Portals materials has allowed me to become more familiar with the O*NET website.  O*NET is the nation’s free source of occupational information which contains hundreds of occupation-specific career descriptions.  This site is much more than a tool for the Career Portals course.  You can search for careers by keywords, your interests or you can browse over 900 career options sorted by specific industry. It may be used throughout your life in the event you decide to change jobs later on. 

Listed below are just some of the many resources you can access through the O*NET site. 

Career Exploration Tools http://www.onetcenter.org/tools.html

You can use these tools for self-directed career exploration tools to plan career options. These tools are also a great resource for students who are thinking about their future career plans. 

O*NET Work Importance Locator  http://www.onetcenter.org/WIL.html?p=3

The O*NET Work Importance Locator is a self-assessment career exploration tool that allows you to identify what is important in a job. It will help you identify occupations that you may like based on the similarity between your work values and the characteristics of the occupations.

Green Occupations  http://www.onetcenter.org/green.html

You can also specifically search for green increased-demand occupations, green enhanced skills occupations, and green new and emerging occupations on the O*NET website. 

Bright Outlook  http://www.mynextmove.org/find/bright

The Bright Outlook section highlights careers that will grow rapidly over the next few years; will have large numbers of openings; and are new and emerging. 

Professionals face aggressive competition for the most desired positions in the workforce.  It is essential to be able to use a variety of online tools to research careers and occupations.  Take a few minutes to explore the O*NET website; it may be perfect for you classroom or your personal life. 

Resource

O*NET OnLine. (n.d.). Retrieved June 11, 2015, from http://www.onetonline.org/

Employability Skills Checklist

By Amber O’Casey

Curriculum Coordinator

CTE Curriculum Coordinator

Government & Public Administration

Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security

 

Are you looking for ways to develop your students’ employability skills? Well, look no farther. The Perkins Collaborative Research Center has developed an employability skills checklist tool. This user-friendly assessment is customizable so you can tailor it to meet the needs of your classroom or your individual students. To create a checklist simply visit their website and follow the three-step instructions:

1.    Choose the type of checklist (teacher or student)

2.    Select all or some of the employability skills that you want to assess

3.    Click the create the checklist icon 

The result is a personalized employability skills assessment in the form of a .pdf file. The assessment may be used in many ways such as, inventorying the employability skills already present in your lessons or creating a customized rubric to strengthen specific skills for individual students. As a bonus the online master checklist provides general activity ideas for each employability skill. These can be used to develop specific skills in your students or to assess the skills that you are teaching during your favorite class activities. This tool is an efficient and effective way to make employability skills a clear and measurable aspect of your classroom at no cost. Enjoy!

SOURCE: http://cte.ed.gov/employabilityskills/index.php/developingskills/create_checklist (2014) 

New Framework for CTE

by Kristin Petrunin Marketing Cluster Specialist

This fall I had an opportunity to attend the Association for Career and Technical Education Research conference in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference was full of great ideas for CTE students, educators, and administrators. Across all of the information presented at the conference, one specific idea seemed to answer CTE’s most pressing need. What is CTE?

Dr. Jay Rojewski and Dr. Roger Hill (2014) created an evolutionary framework for 21st Century CTE. The framework was not cluster specific and did not promise to contain all of the answers for the field. It was a solid starting point for addressing what CTE needs to become. Three components were suggested to create lasting and durable outcomes for students in the 21st century workplace. 

Final Thoughts
CTE is often accused of cluster loyalty instead of holistic career success. What if we started to address this framework within all career clusters? Have we become engrossed in relaying course content instead of preparing students for individualized career decisions? Is it possible to include this framework within current coursework?

iCivics.org: Excellent Educational Games

by Amber O’Casey
Cluster Specialist
Government & Public Administration and Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security

iCivics.org is an excellent resource for GPA and LPSCS educators and any educator promoting civic knowledge. It is a “web-based education project designed to reinvigorate civics teaching and learning” which “features free games, lesson plans, web quests, and interactive modules.” The curriculum covers a broad range of civics topics and the educational games

provide students (and admittedly educators) with fun, first person, virtual civic experiences. Below is a list that highlights the game topics. Take a few minutes to try one of the games. You and your students will enjoy it.

 

Citizenship and Participation

• Activate – campaign for an issue of your choice
• Cast Your Vote – moderate a political debate
• Counties Work – create and manage a county
• Immigration Nation – guide newcomers along their path to citizenship
• Responsibility Launcher – give civic sense to virtual citizens
• We the Jury – act as a jury member and deliberate a case

The Constitution and Bill of Rights

• Argument Wars – argue a Supreme Court case
• Do I Have a Right? – run your own constitutional law firm
• Do I Have a Right?: Bill of Rights – run your own firm specializing in the Bill of Rights
• Power Play – coach a team of players competing to win power for the state or federal government

Budgeting

• People’s Pie – control the budget of the federal government

 

Separation of Powers

• Branches of Power – control all three branches of government

The Executive Branch

• Executive Command – act as the President
• Win the White House – manage your own presidential campaign

The Legislative Branch

Law Craft – act as a member of Congress

Represent Me – work as a legislator

 

The Judicial Branch

• Argument Wars – (see above)
• Court Quest – navigate the US court system
• Do I Have a Right? – (see above)
• Supreme Decision – act as a Supreme Court justice
• We The Jury – (see above)