Day 1 It took a little while for the students to concentrate and actively participate in discussions about the course. This could be attributed to a number of factors including the noise in the library, low English proficiency and uncertainty about the course. However, once the students began to concentrate on what was being said it was revealed that a couple of them had a strong understanding about web design and IT in general while the others had only a very fair understanding of IT and the various devices. Only 1 out of the 10 students had thought about attending university. Many of them did not know much about university education and the courses offered at the different tertiary institutions. In terms of the dream job the students wished to work in, a number of different roles were offered including nurse, interpreter, spray painter, hairdresser, pilot and various roles in IT. Overall, the students preferred more practical type of jobs. This was also reflected in their engagement with the course. It was observed that they engaged better with the practical component of the course rather than the theoretical aspect. This was due to the English proficiency of the students which overall was not very strong. The students were very modest about what they expected out of the course, preferring certificates, awards, knowledge, experience and a good time over specific items or materials.
You have been hand-selected to participate in this program, which is for young people from refugee backgrounds. The program has different components: TAFE which introduces you to what you can do after you finish school STARTTS which supports people from refugee backgrounds to settle in Australia WorkVentures which provides people with the necessary IT skills to get jobs. We are here to deliver the IT component and to: help learn more than what you are taught at school Introduce you to the kind of web design that you can study after you finish school and that you can do for a job Provide you with technology skills that you can pass onto others and to use to give something back to your community
You are going to learn how to design and develop a web site. This requires more than just being able to use a computer. A large part of web design does not require computers at all, but involves finding out information about: Who is going to use your web site What are the things they need from your web site If there are already any other web sites that do the same thing as yours Working out what should go on the web site and how it should look and feel Seeing if what you have produced works and what the user thinks of it. That is, it requires a lot of research before we begin putting the web site together.
Does anyone here have a job? What would you like to do for a job?
When designing and developing web sites, what kind of work do you think is done?
It is OK if you don’t know much about each of these jobs. You will learn more about them and have a chance at doing them.
Your expectations, our expectations regarding: Attendance Communication Effort Collaboration Rewards and renumeration
Discussion of incentives for weekly attendance and course retention. Eg: X points for weekly attendance Y points for absence with notification Z points for absence without notification
Before you decide which jobs you will be doing, there are things that we need to find out first. The first is what are your skills? What are the things you can do? What are the things you are good at?
Has anyone had a job interview? What happens at a job interview? What is a job interview for?
If you were to try and find out which job each of you is most suited to, what kind of questions would you ask? Eg: What is your biggest talent? What is your dream job? What job would you like to on the web team? What kind of computer skills do you have? What would you like to learn? What are your weaknesses?
Now what we are going to do is get you to pair off and interview each other. We would like you to record the interview in some way. This is for several reasons: We would like to document the skills you have at the beginning of the course (then at the end of the course, to record you again to see what you have learnt and the difference in your skills) we want you to learn interview skills by getting you to be interviewed as well as do the interviewing We are also getting you to learn new technology skills by using different devices to record the interviews. But first, we are going to demonstrate what we would like you to do.
Following interviews: Transfer all video and audio files onto USB sticks Consolidate all files onto laptop Upload to project blog