Next week is Essential Skills Boot Camp week!
Don’t be afraid of the name, we do not expect you to scale camouflaged nets or be yelled at by a Sergeant Major!!
The week will be FUN and you will get lots of tutor support to guide you through the PLAN > DO > REVIEW cycle.
Some of you may be wondering what exactly we are going to expect from you as your first project – so why not have a look at what previous groups created.
http://ourlearning.wordpress.com/category/key-skills/
The previous groups created their projects as PowerPoint presentations, leaflets or reports. As you can see from their own comments on the Learning Reflections blog, many were feeling just as you might do now, but were really pleased when they had successfully completed their projects.
“It was daunting at first, but once I got into it, there was no stopping me! After my first month of training, its great to see how far I have come.” – David Morgan
Preparation
There is no need to start the project yet, to be honest it is better if you just attend all the workshops and get the support you need from the tutors to guide you through the planning process!
But there is nothing to stop you thinking of a topic you would like to research and complete your project on.
It can be on ANYTHING IN THE WORLD and should be on something that you are at least interested in – otherwise you will have a boring week!
Examples:
- Sports/sports personalities
- Favourite celebrity
- Favourite band/musician
- Favourite location/holiday resort
- Favourite event (upcoming or annual)
- Medical problems
- Financial (recession, struggling banks)
- Politics (why not take another swipe at the politicians)
- Charities
- Television programmes
Anything goes!
We’d be particularly keen to see projects that have a real world purpose above and beyond ‘passing the course at ITeC’.
One possible charity activity we’ve linked in with in the past is the LAA Youth and Education Support organisation which encourages young people to take up science, technology, engineering and maths careers (including IT!), using the medium of aviation as a ‘hook’ in. Some of our younger learners recently organised an event with them at the Waterfront Museum! They’re preparing for a conference next month and have a lot of brochures, agendas, info packs etc to produce as well as articles for their newsletter.
Another option for a real world project is web content for Oystermouth Castle. They’re looking to adapt some print articles for the web, add this season’s events information and get more local content up to push up the search rankings.
If either of the above appeal and you’re interested in making your project more ‘real’ then see me (Leia) this week before starting your project plan.