After COVID-19 and e-learning, we have learned a lot about virtual learning. Career exploration is no different. There are lots of ways that you can encourage your students to do virtual career exploration.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
Virtual Career Fair
We talked a lot in our last podcast about hosting career fairs. Check out our Career Exploration- Engaging with The Community to learn more about career fairs. Today we are going to show you how to turn it virtual!
ThingLink is a cool website that allows you to create interactive spaces. We used this to create a virtual 4th-8th grade Career Exposure Fair. The first step is to create your background. We chose a Bitmoji gymnasium and then added graphics of tables. Each table represented a career cluster.
For each career cluster, we provided two different videos for students to explore. You can reach out to your community for videos. Ensure that you have extra time to reach out to the community. We found that we needed to send several reminders. Alternatively, YouTube has a lot of video options that you can link to ThingLink.
O*Net -Occupational Information Network
O*Net is a powerhouse of information for your students to do virtual career exploration. They can explore individual occupations or career clusters. For each job, they can discover the salary, job outlook, types of skills required to perform that job, and the education needed.
My Next Move is a website that connects with O*Net. Students can take an interest profiler quiz to determine their career interests. The results will refer them back to O*Net to explore the careers they are interested in.
Education Planner
EducationPlanner.org has tons of information and resources for students, parents, and counselors. Here you can do a Career Cluster Finder. You check boxes of things that interest and describe you. The results will show you career clusters that are likely of interest to you. The clusters can be explored on O*Net.
A Learning Style Inventory is a great way for students to understand how they learn. Students answer a few questions, and then they are shown their learning styles. While reviewing the results, students can learn ways to help them study and how they can be successful in embracing their learning styles.
Education Planner also offers information on college searches, scholarships, and career videos. This is an excellent resource for students to explore life after school.
Online Career Exploration
College Board is most frequently known for the SAT and AP tests, but they have many more resources! You can find college information and scholarship information as well. Today we want to focus on career exploration.
Students can even explore careers on College Board. While exploring careers, they can find information about what high school classes they should take and college majors to consider.
Roadtrip Nation is an amazing resource for students. Students start by picking a few interesting things and then explore Roadtrip Nation videos. These are short, interesting videos that follow individuals in their careers. Roadtrip Nation traveled around the country to get video clips of interesting people doing interesting jobs.
Make It Movement is another website students can select their interests and then explore videos about careers that are related. Each career will show students possible salaries, skills required, education required, and the benefits of working in that career path. This is a simple and engaging way for students to do virtual career exploration.
Additional Assessments
Personality Max has a free MI Advantage test that takes about 25 minutes to complete. There is no login required. There is a 20-page personality report that includes personality traits, strengths, learning style, and right and left brain tendencies.
Truity – has a free Holland Code Career Test. Holland codes classify you according to your interests. RIASEC, Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. This is a shorter test that takes about 5 minutes to complete. It is also the test that is used on My Next Move. There are additional career assessments and personality tests available on Truity.
Head over to MyMindTrek.com to get more ideas and free Career Exploration resources.
SEL Unfiltered
Do you want to hear more? Check out the rest of our series on Career Readiness on our SEL Unfiltered podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts.
Check out other episodes in our Career Readiness series, including Why Career Readiness?, Exploration – Engaging with the Community, Landing the Job, and Employability Skills.
Game of the Week
Every week on SEL Unfiltered, we like to bring you a game or activity. You can use the game with your students, in the classroom, or in a small group. This week Kaitlin and I did Wordy Wednesday.
Wordy Wednesday is a great way to get to know your students, practice communication skills, and build relationships. The premise is simple. Students share a word that matches the topic. Kaitlin and I did, “A word that describes you.”
We love our Take 5 activities here at SEL Unfiltered, and this is no exception. You can do Wordy Wednesday as an exit ticket, as a discussion topic in a small group, or for the entire class.
You can create topics that are relevant to your students. Try get-to-know-you questions. Your favorite food. You can also ask questions relevant to the material covered in class, silly questions, or questions that dig into SEL skills.
