Maine Learning Technology Initiative

In partnership with Wri2me (What’s Really Important to ME, wri2ME.com), MLTI is hosting a webinar titled Navigating the Real World on February 2, 2010 at 3:15 pm and 7:15 pm. This webinar is in addition to MLTI’s regularly scheduled Thursday webinars.  To register please visit http://www.maine121.org/webcasts/.

This webinar is enhanced from the first session on January 19th and is open to anyone to participate.

Navigating the Real World is a printed manual that will be distributed in late April to all Maine high school students and many 8th graders as well. At its companion web site, www.NavigatingTheRealWorld.org, you can view a substantial number of interviews. Use and help create Navigating the Real World and its associated web site, www.NavigatingTheRealWorld.org. They are being developed by the Maine-based nonprofit, What’s Really Important to Me, Inc. with help from Maine high school and college students.

Help your students learn from the experiences of people who are a few years ahead of them, and give them the opportunity to contribute to a real publication that will reach 80,000 Maine teenagers in schools throughout the state.

Both the site and the printed edition feature the voices of Maine people – in many cases collected by Maine students – who have recent experiences that are valuable to current Maine high school students. These include mistakes made and seen, surprises, what worked and what didn’t, what they wish they had been told, and what they would do differently. Topics include getting a job, work and careers, college and training, serving in the military, money, credit cards and debt, challenges faced, and living on their own. Also included are the perspectives of people who hire and work with new employees. Wherever possible these voices are being gathered and edited by Maine students.

In this webinar you will:

• Learn how you and your students can use the site as a resource for a range of class subjects and guidance topics – including interview segments that are especially interesting, valuable and/or entertaining for high school and middle school students in Jobs for Maine Graduates, alternative education, coop education, English, journalism, career exploration, economics and other classes.
• Learn how your students can do interviews and post them at www.NavigatingTheRealWorld.org for the benefit of others and as a resource for the printed edition.
• Learn other ways that your students can do other editorial assignments that will be published in the printed edition: written features and profiles; research on schools, programs and valuable alternatives; designs, illustrations and cartoons.
• Learn other ways your classes and individual students can help us launch, market and distribute this new publication this spring, over the summer, and in the coming year.

This offers the opportunity for students to learn from people about their real experiences post-schooling, and to help create the first edition of a real publication that can genuinely help their fellow students across the state.