In my Final Project I would like to develop a WebQuest about career counseling in high school, because I think this kind of structure could be so useful to help the students in the career exploration and decision-making process.
I chose this topic, because I have worked in different levels with the students into the classroom and I could see that always they need help to do a search about careers and also to work with this information according to their individual tests results. It seems like it is not enough to know which are their abilities, interests and values; they need to do an efficient career exploration and adequate decision-making, especially when they are in high school. On the other hand, I believe that is very important to support the teenagers to find their respective vocations, not just in the world of work, but also their vocation in life to become a fulfilled person.
Using constructivist approach, teachers and career counselors can obtain always better results, because the students are not just using technology, but they are working with their own knowledge and experience. This point is extremely important, because in this case the first knowledge is about themselves. On the other hand, working in cooperative groups and using technological resources, the students can learn together about careers and institutions, going faster through higher cognitive levels such as analyzing data, evaluating the information and creating their own tools and strategies to develop an educational plan.
With the WebQuest every student can improve their research, because they can use the links provided in the resources, finding in short time diverse kind of occupations and institutions databases. Also they can use interactive tools to support the career counseling process, even at home if they want it.Therefore, they can spend more time working with the results of the search and not just finding valuable Web sites in this topic.
Finally, I want to incorporate, at least, the following steps into the WebQuest:
- The students work in groups (3) doing career exploration, according to the results of their self-knowledge tests.
- They choose three careers, occupations or jobs to share with the class the information about professional profiles and occupational fields.
- The students work with institutions databases to obtain information about centers, colleges, financial aid and scholarships for those careers.
- Every group has to create a fictional work environmentto incorporate those careers and their characteristics.
- The groups may prepare a pamphlet with Word, a Power Point presentation or a collage made with Photoshopto show and explain their works to the class.