Since this is a career and technical education class, we have a great opportunity to reflect on your goals for the near (and not so near) future and to look at how computing fits into these.

You will spend the next class periods (until Friday 1/14) working on a reflection and research “paper.”  You will turn in a Word document with the following sections:

Your career aspirations (about 1 page)

• What are some of the things you will look for in a career and why? (Money? Travel? Flexibility?)
• If you had to pick a career path today, what would it be?  Why?
• Research what kind of training that career path requires — is college the best way to reach your goals?  Describe at least two paths to get where you want to go.  Mention specific schools or programs you are interested in.
• List the ways in which you imagine you will use computing in this future path.

Computing at work (about 2 pages)

You have two options for this section — dive more deeply into one way computing is used in your desired career path or research a specific computing career.

Option 1: your career and computing

Look up how computing affects a field you think you might be interested in pursuing.  For example, if you are interested in pursuing nursing, it would be very useful for you to know that Nursing Information Specialists are in high demand.  If you’re interested in being a journalist, you might investigate the role of social networking in providing news.  If you’re interested in becoming an FBI agent, read about how agency records are now linked by an expensive computer system.  If you want to be an auto mechanic, you might be interested in reading one mechanic saying that “computers have become as much a part of the tool box as wrenches.” Summarize the applications of computing you find and describe how they will impact what you do.  Provide lots of details and cite your sources.

Option 2: cool computing jobs and/or projects

Take this as an opportunity to dig more deeply into what it’s like to work in computing.  You could describe the daily tasks involved in a particular computing job, for example, a computer forensics expert.  Alternately, you could focus on a specific research area like Human Computer Interaction or a particular research project like Fold-It.  Provide lots of details and cite your sources.  These resources should help get you started:

• Computer science jobs
• Computing jobs
• Computer science sub-fields
• UW computer science research
• MIT media lab research

(6 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)

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