Learning about Careers in Technology

I remember career day like it was yesterday

I dressed up as a teacher after researching the career for homework. I was so excited to present what I learned- where to go to college, how much money I would make, and what the job would entail. 

Fast forward to teaching technology, I had an opportunity to instill this excitement in my 600+ students! 

It was important to me for my students to learn as many technology careers as possible in a short amount of time. I found this great set of (affiliate link follows) Technology Career Cards on amazon that I used for the activity. 

Learning about the technology careers

The deck of cards contains 48 cards. My largest class was 28 students. 

As the students walked in the door I handed out the technology career cards without saying a word. When they all made it to their seats I let them know that we wouldn't be having a "normal" day in technology. We were going to learn about real careers they could have if they keep building on the skills we practice in class. 

Based on their card, their assignment was to make a one page PowerPoint poster that explains the career in their own words. They were allowed to use the internet to look up any words they didn't know as well as to find a picture to represent the career. The career cards each included 4 sections: learn about it, think about it, talk about it, and do it. I asked them to write the information on the card in their own words and as bullet points. We had been working on using PowerPoint to make presentations for a few weeks, so they were ready to have free control over a one page file. 

The main challenge of this assignment is that they only had about 25 minutes to complete it. We had to present the careers that same class period. I was lucky enough to have a software called Lanschool, which allows the teacher to display any connected computer screen to all of the connected screens so that really cut down on the time it would have taken for each student to come up front, prepare their slide, and then present. They stayed right at their seats and spoke to the class about their work. 

I wish I had saved the examples because the students did a really great job. They were so surprised that there were technology careers that no one had ever heard about. Little do they know that most of them will have careers that don't even exist yet!

Just for fun, I put together this digital photo booth scene for you and your students. Share this image with them and then have them insert it into PowerPoint or Google Slides. Add a selfie between the headphones and then in the white rectangle add text saying something like "I am a Technology Teacher." What a fun thing to have scrolling through for a parent teacher conference day or back to school night if you make one file with all of the finished scenes! 

Thanks for reading this post. How do you like to teach about careers in your classroom?