Update: Specialized Learning

The opportunity to deeply research and understand a career in high school is very rare. Imagine making a website based on an occupation. The amount of information gained would help determine if the job would be enjoyed or not. It is a great and unique opportunity.

As mentioned in my first blog, this idea for specialized learning is being used in my English class in quarter four. It has recently gone into effect and is going great. It did have to be slightly edited from the original version. In the original, every slide would be dedicated to a different aspect of the career, giving a complete understanding of the career. However, my teacher made an executive decision to alter the tab layout to create a more curriculum based website. This was unfortunate because it took away some of the creativity and no longer gives the students a full understanding of the job. Every student is making a website using all of the work we have done over the year. We are then twisting the work to gear more towards the career. This still gives the students a basic understanding of the career they are interested in. They also can show off all of the work they have done all year.

The students are liking the website. Putting all of their work together creates a portfolio that can be sent to colleges. Some students are taking advantage of this opportunity and alluding to their career of choice in most of their work. However, the majority are barely weaving any into the work. The allusions to the careers are not very deep either, mostly facts that are well known about the career. This is where this revised idea fell short of what I had in mind. Where it pulls everything together to form a great college portfolio, it doesn’t give all students a deeper understanding of their potential career choice. There is no need for research if all that is needed is a small reference to the job every once in a while. It also limits the amount of creative work that can be done. While the website makes a great portfolio for college, it doesn’t achieve what it was meant to achieve.

Even though my original idea was changed, I am glad that students are getting more exposure to the jobs that interest them. I hope that this ends up helping students figure out if they really are interested in the job and want to pursue it. The goal of this was to give students a deeper understanding of the career they want to pursue and while it doesn’t give the full effect, the website still helps with that.