Staying in the Loop

Workplace safety: Part 2

You have been hired to create and deliver a short presentation on an aspect of safety in a specific workplace. Fortunately, there are lots of you, and you get to choose.

Using information linked here, create a 6-10 slide information deck on one aspect of safety in one area of employment listed.

For instance, I chose eye injuries in the automotive industry by clicking on automotive and then on eye injuries.

Use both the instructor guide and the student handout to gather as much information as possible. If you choose to look at other resources (online or otherwise) please be sure that the source is valid and relevant for our context (BC, Canada).

The slide deck needs to have an introductory slide, clear information in the body (as well as following JP Phillips’ tips) and a concluding slide.

 

Workplace Safety

This brochure provides young and new workers with useful tips about how to address concerns about safety in the workplace.

Task: Read through the brochure and create a dialogue between a new worker and a supervisor who is very aware of safety in the workplace. Include at  least 5 questions that a new worker should ask a supervisor. Be sure to be clear about the type of work the new worker is taking on as well as the expectations of the workplace. This assignment allows for a bit a creativity. Make it a real conversation!

Goal: It is important that you understand safety in the workplace. Creating an imaginary conversation between two people (supervisor and worker) allows you the opportunity to read a piece of text and transform the information into something else.

How to present: you may write a script,  create an audio conversation, a video of two people, or draw a comic strip. If you have another suggestion, make it!

Submit your completed assignment by May 27 to stay on track with this last push to the end of the course. Please use effective email etiquette. The subject line must read: ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT SAFETY.

 

 

YOUR presentation with PUNCH!

Here‘s my video introduction to the BIG final assignment for this part of the course.

Here is the link to Good Jobs for Today & Tomorrow. I talk about this in the video introduction.

Please watch this and ask questions via email (astott@sd73.bc.ca) or by text (250-318-1620).

 

Presentations with PUNCH: 2

In an effort to stay marginally more organized (and not have a post that goes on forever), here is the next step of our Presentations with Punch project.

Step 3

Using the knowledge you gained about effective PowerPoint presentations or Google Slide Decks, review this WORK and PRODUCTIVITY  presentation. Your feedback needs to be linked directly to JP Phillips’ tips for avoiding death.

Your review can be written or video recorded. You can text your writing or video feedback, send it as an attachment (using your excellent email skills – grammar, spelling, greeting, subject line etc), or deliver it to the school. The options are almost endless.

In looking at an example, you can begin to see what will work for you and what you might do differently. There are no right answers to this assignment. I am looking for critical reflection and an ability to link what you learned from “How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint” to this slide deck.

You may be predicting (and you are right) that you will be creating your own slide deck with voice over or script as the next step. Content expectations to follow on Monday.

 

Presentations with PUNCH

You will likely find yourself needing to make a presentation more than once in your life that will lead to a new client contract, a new employment opportunity, a promotion or entry into a post secondary learning opportunity.

I have discovered, as an audience member, that slide decks often detract from a presentation that is meant to engage viewers, teach something, or inspire. Let’s change that.

First step:

Watch the following TEDtalk given by JP Phillips.  It’s called How to Avoid Death by Powerpoint for a reason. He is passionate about engaging an audience through purposeful presentation tactics. You WILL learn a lot. If you can’t watch the Tedtalk because of internet woes (or whatever, really), here is a link to the transcript.

Once you have watched  (or while you are watching) the TEDtalk, create a one page doodle page, one page note page, one page web, one page of boxes or one page of your choice that clearly denotes the KEY points Phillips makes in his talk.  When complete, scan and send it to my via email (astott@sd73.bc.ca) or text (250-318-1620) or drop it by the school in our dropbox outside the front doors.

Second Step (has TWO mini steps – like the quick two steps in the two step):

Using the knowledge you have gained from Phillips’ talk, create ONE slide that showcases what you believe is the most important tip in avoiding death by PowerPoint. You can make a slide and share it with me, or you can draw a mock up of the slide on paper and scan or text it to me.

Write an email, with the subject line “essential to avoiding death by PowerPoint“, explaining, to me, why the tip you chose is the most important tip and one you can never forget to use when making presentation slides. The email does not have to be long, but it does need to be clear, compelling and convincing. Sell your point of view.

Please complete the Second Step by Thursday; I would like to confidently provide you with your Third Step (the bigger assignment that puts many of the things we have been focusing on and learning about together) on Friday.

Third Step… up next

email: show what you know

Assignment

1. Write three emails in response to three different situations (described below)

2. Use the 7 tips presented by GrammarGirl (the focus on last week’s task and the previous blog post).

3. For our purposes, send each of these email messages to me (astott@sd73.bc.ca) from an appropriately professional email address of your own.

The Scenarios

• Scenario #1:  You are a student at Barriere Secondary School.  You know an assignment is due in a week that you will not be able to complete on time because of a test you have for another class. You also know that this teacher has a policy where late work is penalized except when students inform the professor ahead of time that the work will be late. Email your teacher to explain the situation and to ask for a one week extension.

 

• Scenario #2:  You are a student, and as part of a class project, everyone is being asked to invite a speaker to an online class. Given the topic of email correspondence, you are being asked to invite a busness owner or career professional, (perhaps the same one you write a business letter to earlier this semester) to a Zoom live “chat” to talk about some of the challenges and rewards of the business or career the person is engaged in. You are asking for the Zoom call to take place on  April 15 or April 22.

 

• Scenario #3: You have been asked, as a leader in our school, to write a mass email that will be sent to all parents and students, that communicates key health and safety measures we are to be actively participating in as you are working and learning from home. Ensure that you are addressing physical and mental health concerns. In your email, attach links to TWO sources of information that are relevant to your audience (British Columbian, Interior Health, Canadian, families).

I look forward to receiving THREE emails from you. This assignment is due on THURSDAY. Ensuring that you use the 7 tips and follow them carefully in your email communication is essential.

This task has been heavily adapted from http://323.stevendkrause.com/assignments/email-writing-assignment/.

Learning continues: sending professional email

You’ve had some good practice writing business letters in full block format and I feel like we’ve made some collective progress in ensuring that we are

1. using full block (NO indenting anything and remembers SPACES between our SHORT paragraphs)

2. capitalizing proper nouns (this includes our last names, the pronoun “I”, the names of roads and the province of BC)

3. signing our letters (ABOVE our typed name).

 

It is essential that the impactful email that we send to a prospective employer, a university admissions officer, a business owner that we are disappointed in, or a government office employee is clear, concise, and aims to achieve a goal. It cannot be too colloquial (look that word up if you don’t know what it means) and certainly void of all slang. An email with impact matters when you want to make a good impression. I predict that all of you want to make a good impression.

Here is a link to the podcast you need to listen to titled “7 Ways to Write Better Email Messages”. The transcript (the written version) is below the link to the voice for those of you who would rather read the tips.

I have learned a lot from Grammar Girl over the many years I have “known” her, and hope that you enjoy the opportunity to listen to someone rather than simply reading. This podcast is pretty new (last week) and, in addition to the email tips, she also gives us some history about the origins of the word pandemic and epidemic that some of you might find interesting and something to talk about with your family at the dinner table.

To make sure that you have absorbed these tips into your brains and for the rest of your life, please do the following:

1. find a piece of paper that you can fold into 4.
2. unfold the piece of paper so that, with the back and front, you have eight rectangles to work with.
3. in the top left corner rectangle on one side of your paper, create a title box that says “7 email must-dos” or something catchy like that, along with your name
4. for the remaining 7 boxes, summarize each tip in one box, and create a graphic (a small picture) that will help to trigger the memory of that email tip. For instance, I might put the letters R and E in a circle and cross it out as a reminder for tip one.
5. to submit this assignment, you can
   1. take a photo of the front and back and send in an email (astott@sd73.bc.ca)
   2. take a photo of the front and back and send in a text (250-318-1620)
   3. drop it off in an envelope at the school (if you live close by this might work to get outside with purpose)

Don’t have paper?  Please create a google doc with 4 rectangles on two spreads and do the same thing. Still not liking that idea? Your final option is to use Google Slides (or PPT) and create an 8 slide presentation with the same summary and graphic. For both of these computer based options, if you choose to find an image online, you MUST cite it (no plagiarism in this class).  This means stating what site you acquired the graphic from. I recommend using something like Pixabay because the graphics there are unlicensed and, therefore, do not require citations. There are many simple and memorable graphics that are available through this creative commons site.

This assignment is due on THURSDAY. Tomorrow afternoon you will receive an email practice assignment.

One Pager: Skills and Aptitudes of Success

Looking at the success of individuals helps us to learn what it takes to be successful for some.

Today we are studying the individual in hopes of learning more about the skills and aptitudes they developed over time that helped them to be successful.

Some questions you might want to explore include:

What skills and aptitude does this person exemplify to be successful in their career?

How did these skills and aptitudes develop over time?

How did the individual develop the skill or aptitude?

Who supported the person and why was that support integral to their success?

What skill or aptitude was/is most important to their success? Why do you think this?

 

General Skills Aptitude Test: doing the work

1. Completing the General Skills Aptitude Test is like a test of your ability to read directions carefully and to be patient with yourself through the process. Your job is to use ONE of the three careers you are interested in to complete the job assessment pillars and then to compare your findings to your self assessment. The goal is to reflect on career fit based on this test.

2. Complete a Venn Diagram. This tool allows you to see, very clearly, where your skills and aptitudes line up with those required of the job you are interested in.  One circle is titled ME and the other is the job or career of your choice. The cross over piece are the similarities. Look at the data you collected in the General Skills Aptitude Test and focus on the highest scores for each of self and career.

When you have completed both of these tasks

1. save the letter you wrote to a person in a career area of your interest as a PDF.

2. send the letter in an email to me at astott@sd73.bc.ca using effective email etiquette.