Continuation of Creativity and Innovation - Write Out a Plan

Standard 5 states:

Demonstrate creativity and innovation: Use idea-generating techniques to explore divergent and atypical questions and perspectives to develop original ideas for products or solve problems – such as a constructed object, proposal, presentation, solution to a problem, service, system, work of art, writing sample, invention, event, or an improvement to an existing product. Exhibit insight into the particular needs and interests of the target audience that are driving the process of innovation.

Now that you've identified a need for change and put some thoughts on paper (and in your blog post), it's time to do what separates the good from the great.  You're going to lay out a plan for implementing change at your placement.  It's not enough to say, "this needs to change." Rather, until you put together a strategy for making the change so that the decision-makers can consider it,  you're nothing more than a cynic.

That said, at your placement, please consider ways in which your change can and will successfully be put into action.  When you return to class, use your time in my room to map out a step-by-step process that will improve the efficiency of your organization.  With this in place, we will work on creating a presentation (formal letter, PowerPoint, video, etc.) of your choosing that will be introduced to your workplace mentor and/or direct manager.

Remember, you're not required to do anything earth-shattering (remember the white board over the sink example I explained last week).  You're just going to show your supervisors that you are capable of one of the 21st Century skills that others simply overlook.  I look forward to hearing about your plans.  Have a great week!

Creativity and Innovation: Changing Things for the Better

Standard 5 states:

Demonstrate creativity and innovation: Use idea-generating techniques to explore divergent and atypical questions and perspectives to develop original ideas for products or solve problems – such as a constructed object, proposal, presentation, solution to a problem, service, system, work of art, writing sample, invention, event, or an improvement to an existing product. Exhibit insight into the particular needs and interests of the target audience that are driving the process of innovation.

I really like how this standard is worded, and I want us to dive into this standard as much as possible this week, and, based on how involved our action plan is, next week as well.

The title of this week's blog will guide us toward our end goal of changing/improving upon a current procedure/practice at your placement.  While on the job this week, I would like all of you to analyze the everyday tasks and activities that the employees carry out.  Think of a problem that occurs frequently or a task that could be completed more quickly if something was changed.  After your analysis, you will return to class to devise a plan or proposal that you will present to your supervisor.  This week and next, you will formulate that proposal/plan and when it's complete, you will actually present it.

This week is strictly dedicated to thinking of the problem, devising a solution, and putting your ideas on paper (actually in your blog).  You will compose a blog post that describes the problem and your ideal solution, and next week, you will work on your presentation (can be in PowerPoint [yawn], on video, or in the form of an invention).  Either way, you will set your eyes on a solution and let your supervisor know how you can help the organization improve.  Students from other schools have used a project like this to earn a promotion or gain public recognition.  Who knows what great things will happen when you complete this.

Have a great week!  I'll see you all tomorrow.

Clear and Effective Communication - Publishing Your Weebly Pages

This week, we will focus on clear and effective communications in verbal, written, physical (body language), and digital forms.  While you are on your placements, please think about how your tone of voice, choice of words, body language, and outward appearance send effective messages with co-workers and customers.  Be cognizant of how you carry yourself outside the workplace as well, and see if there is a difference in your professionalism.  This week's artifact will be a simple 150+ word blog detailing your communication skills.

Additionally, many of you have either not published your websites or have left our artifacts that you actually completed (think letters of recommendation, resume, college/scholarship application reflections, gender identity blog entry, etc.).  You'll need to get everything published and updated by the end of this week so that you can follow up on your SMART goals in future blog entries, and so you can show off ALL of the work you've done this school year.

I look forward to seeing you all later this week.  Enjoy your placements!

Portfolio Update - SMART Goals, Vision Board, and Proofreading

This week's post will revolve around an email I sent you all earlier today.  By the end of this week, you will all have a more comprehensive Weebly that will begin to demonstrate all the great things you're doing at your placements.  See below:

By Friday, you will need to have your portfolio websites updated with at least the following:

1. 5 blog entries (either linked from your website or included in your website): This shouldn't be difficult since you were assigned six entries last semester and one last week.  See previous blog entries for different topics, but your most recent entry MUST include your SMART goals (Personal, Academic, Placement) Refer to this blog entry for an example of the minimum expectation for your SMART goals entry
2. Your Intro Video
3. A short bio/"About Me" writing piece (5 or 6 sentences) on the same page as your intro video
4. Awards/Certifications - load images of these as a slideshow
5. Work Samples - coordinate with your placement supervisor what you can and can't use.  Performance reviews, images of you working independently, and feedback from supervisors are all effective options
6. Vision Board - This can be either electronic (use snipping tool to paste images and quotes to an MS Publisher file in landscape orientation) or on paper (just snap a photo of your vision board and upload the image) - you must provide a short paragraph (5 or 6 sentences) about what is included in your vision board

All of you are doing great things on your placements, however there is very few, if any, tangible evidence of your great work beyond the stories you share with me in class on Thursdays and Fridays.  You must update your portfolios, as this is a requirement of the class and Ms. Peppard and I need to show Central Office personnel how effective your placements are.  We all know you are getting great experience out of this course, but you need to show evidence of it.

On Thursdays and Fridays, your time spent in class needs to be more productive.  All of your pages can and should be updated with the above information by the end of class this Friday, especially if you use the class time productively.

I've copied Ms. Brown and Ms. Peppard to this email so they are aware of the work you need to complete this week.  Next weekend, Ms. Peppard and I will select the two best portfolios to share with Central Office.  Take pride in your work and you will be greatly rewarded.

Update Class Sites and Personal Portfolios

The above image is taken directly from the FBLA competitive events scoring sheet and will be used to assess your work as we create a social media campaign for our WBL class.  

This week, we will use two of the FBLA Competitive Event Topics to guide our work as we demonstrate mastery in communication, thinking & problem-solving, and creativity.  The topics are vague, so I’ve set a daily task checklist to ensure we do our work effectively.  Please see below for our two projects:

Social Media Campaign:

In class, we will create social media accounts for our WBL Class (Northwest High WBL).  We will utilize this platform to promote the course.  This allows us to teach upcoming students what we do in class AND helps everyone in the class create a positive digital footprint.

Website Design:

We’ll also create a Northwest High WBL Weebly page, on which we will highlight our students (feel free to utilize what we included in our Newsletter) and some of the projects we’ve completed.

This week, we’ll simply focus on getting everything launched, adding effective introductory information, and connecting with people who we believe should learn more about what we do (think teachers, underclassmen, friends, and POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS).    Sure, this project is intended to be a learning experience, but if you put together something that will help you stand out among others, why not use it to your advantage?

Our Clear Target for each day this week is as follows:

We can create an effective online presence through effective use of online resources

Monday:

Objective: Create Google, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and Weebly profiles

I’ll begin class by explaining the goal of this project.  Essentially, we want to raise awareness about our WBL class, so the best way to connect to those who will be interested is through their favorite channel – social media.

As a group, you will determine who will manage each account and begin working on the profiles for each.  For the Weebly page, one or two students can come up with a design and skeleton for the site, including what tabs the site will have, what links to include, and what kind of content (images, videos, writing) to present.  Social media pages will require images, a profile, and a number of groups to connect with.  This allows you to get noticed by the right people.  If/when you finish, use any spare time to take notes on what other quality accounts have on their profiles so that we are on par with the best.

By the end of class, each student will report out about how much has been finished.   

Tuesday:

Objectives: Make first posts online, Establish presence by tagging the right people, Connect all channels

Do you ever notice that most businesses have uniformity within their website, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, and email?  This is obviously by design.  On Tuesday, you’ll make sure there is uniformity within our channels so that we have a truly connected identity.

Once this is accomplished, we will actually publish our first posts for our accounts.  Coming up with unique content that will attract followers isn’t easy, so this will take some time to think about.

Once we’ve sent out a few posts/tweets, we can start reaching out to people who might want to follow us or people who we feel would benefit from our message.  This also requires some thinking and research, but thankfully, the websites (and Google) will provide us with some assistance.

By the end of class, we will again report out on our progress.  Once we have uniformity across all channels, we can begin to work on our first big step with this project.

Wednesday:

Objectives: Prepare to give WBL Presentation, Practice run for WBL Presentation

Remember that Google Presentation we made about WBL?  Remember how we were supposed to film ourselves giving that presentation but our camera equipment wouldn’t be in for a few weeks?  Well, our equipment still hasn’t arrived, but we can definitely prepare to give our presentation and thanks to our smartphones, we can still film and load the videos!

On Wednesday, you will be given approximately 10 minutes to review your talking points for the presentation and practice them.  After that 10 minutes, you will have another 5 minutes to work together to establish who will be speaking and when (basically you’ll set the order for giving the presentation).  With the remaining 30 minutes, I expect you to practice giving the presentations at least three times.  After each practice presentation, we will discuss things that went well, things that could have been done differently, and how to make the presentation look and sound worthy of loading to our accounts.

This is not going to be easy, so don’t be upset or disappointed if you’re not perfect by the end of class.  Just be ready to film the presentation when you return to class on Thursday.

Thursday:

Objective: Film at least three takes of WBL Presentation, load presentation to YouTube (on your own time)

All the work you put in on Wednesday, both during and after class, will be put on display on Thursday.  During class, we will record at least three takes of our presentation, allowing us to select the best take to load to our YouTube Channel.  Feedback will be provided after each take, and we will have time to view each take to determine which one is best.

Friday:

Objective: Publish video across all platforms, reflect upon work completed this week.

Once the video is loaded to our YouTube, we can share the video via Twitter and Google+, as well as embedding it to our Weebly.  This will put a nice bow on the work we’ve done all week.

When finished with these tasks, you will compose a Blogger post of at least 250 words (try to stay below 400 words, though), with images and the YouTube video embedded to the post.  Use the following questions to guide your writing:

• Which social media platform did you work on?
• What did you notice about other effective accounts and how did you incorporate them into our WBL account?
• How well do you think you performed in the presentation?
• How will our social media platforms help others understand what we do in class?
• Do you think students will be interested in enrolling in WBL as a result of what we’ve posted?  Why or why not?

That’s it for this week.  I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Week - Option to Go to Placements Monday And Tuesday

Sadly, I’m not going to be in the building on Monday, as I will be with my Virtual Enterprise students at our Trade Fair competition.  Also, since many of you will be at your placements both Monday and Tuesday, the only work I have for you is to email me a brief message about how you are liking your job/internship/volunteer work leading up to the holidays.  I’m not going to bog you down with another written assignment, so make the most of your time at your placements.

For those of you who I do see on Tuesday, we will catch up on missing work (if any), view the final cut of our App Challenge submission, and discuss ways to do more fun videos with the limited time we have in class.

Finally, for anyone still in need of a placement, please make use of class time to apply for jobs, call potential internship hosts (use the list we discussed), and assist Ms. Brown with any work she has for you.  I will see you Tuesday and we will brainstorm a plan to get you in the field.  

That’s it for this week.  I look forward to seeing whoever is around on Tuesday!

Teamwork & Collaboration: Take Two

Last week, you focused on Standard 8, which relates to teamwork.  Since it was only a 3-day week, you really didn’t get a chance to immerse your thoughts in all of the team-oriented tasks you conduct.  That said, you will again focus on collaboration and teamwork at your placements.  To review, Standard 8 states:

8) Collaborate and work productively as a team member: Work effectively as a member of a team and address conflict with sensitivity and respect for diverse points of view. Demonstrate understanding of one’s own impact and build on different perspectives to strengthen joint efforts. Demonstrate leadership where appropriate on collaborative workplace tasks. Effectively employ meeting management strategies, such as use of an agenda, time keeping and meeting facilitation strategies, identifying action items, and scheduling next steps. Work-Place Example: A student works with a diverse team in a warehouse to pull ordered items, package, and ship the items on time. The student alternates between taking the lead and assisting others as the situation demands.

With that said, at your placements, you will again think about the following driving concepts:  

1. Analyze the instances in which you act as a leader and instances in which you follow the lead of others.  
2. Identify how you leverage your strengths with those around you to accomplish your tasks more efficiently.  
3. Finally, make a note of how you deal with minor/major conflicts regarding decision-making and/or distribution of tasks.

Students in the classroom will work on completing your Verizon App Challenge.  There are only a few details to finalize before creating your video, so this week will be a focus on refining and completing the written portion before turning your attention to creating the supporting video. You too will focus on these elements of teamwork:

1. Analyze the instances in which you act as a leader and instances in which you follow the lead of others.  
2. Identify how you leverage your strengths with those around you to accomplish your tasks more efficiently.  
3. Finally, make a note of how you deal with minor/major conflicts regarding decision-making and/or distribution of tasks.

It was pretty tough missing Thursday’s share-out so I’m excited to get back in the classroom with you guys and hear about all the great things that happened during the week.  Keep up the hard work and continue to take pride in everything you do.  I’ll see you tomorrow.