Career portfolios help document education, work samples and skills. People use career portfolios to apply for jobs, apply to college or training programs. They are more in-depth than a resume, which is used to summarize the above in one or two pages. Career portfolios serve as proof of one's skills, abilities, and potential in the future. Career portfolios are becoming common in high schools, college, and workforce development. [ citation needed ]
Career portfolios help with a job or acceptance into higher education institutes. A career portfolio should be personal and contain critical information. Items that should be included include (but are not limited to) personal information, evaluations, sample work, a business portrait, and awards and acknowledgments. Career portfolios are often kept in a simple three-ring binder or online as an electronic portfolio and updated often. A career portfolio is used as a marketing tool in selling oneself for personal advancement. In some industries, employers or admission offices commonly request a career portfolio, so it is a wise idea to have an updated one on hand.
In the 21st century web technology has filtered its way into portfolios especially in the digital workplace job market. While traditional C.V. style portfolios still dominate the portfolio world it is common to back it up with a website containing personal statements, contact details, and experience.
More and more job seekers are building personally branded websites to validate and distinguish their skills, accomplishments, and experiences. Social websites such as LinkedIn and Twitter have become popular, as have services from websites that offer to host portfolios for clients. These web services provide users the tools to include all forms of digital media on their websites, including documents, images, videos, and audio files.
Resume reels and demo tapes are a type of portfolio. They are used by many in the arts such as musicians, actors, artists, and even journalists.
Creative Professionals are also looking to portfolio websites as a means of presenting their work in a more professional and elegant manner.
A typical type of portfolio is used by artists. An artist's portfolio consists of artwork that the artist can take to job interviews, conferences, galleries, and other networking opportunities to showcase his or her work and give others an idea of what type of genre the artist works in. Art Portfolios, sometimes called "artfolios", can be a variety of sizes, and usually consist of approximately ten to twenty photographs of the artist's best works. Some artists create multiple portfolios to showcase different styles and to apply for different types of jobs. For instance, one portfolio may be mainly for doing technical illustrations and another may be for surreal painting or sculpture.
Models and actors often use electronic portfolios to showcase their careers with a digital display of their photos, biographies, and skills. Talent portfolios can also include video.
Animators typically use demo reels, also known as "demo tapes", in place of or in addition to portfolios to demonstrate their skills to potential employers. Demo tapes have historically been short VHS tapes, but most are now DVDs. Demo reels are normally less than two minutes in length and showcase some of the animator's best works. [1]
Another type of industry that can use portfolios as a developmental tool is schools at various levels. Teachers can use these portfolios as an asset to themselves and to their students. Students typically can use portfolios as a tool to select the types of work that they would like to include, reflect on the course work to make connections between the units learned, and help them learn critical thinking skills that are developed during the reflecting and selecting processes. For teachers, however, they are able to put controls on their student's portfolios to help the students throughout the portfolio process. Once the portfolios are completed by each student, the educators of the particular subject are able to look through each portfolio and find any areas that are commonly struggled on by the students. Once this common trouble area in a unit is found, the teacher can now figure out a new way/ adjust the assignments or teaching strategies that were used to educate the students on that particular subject area.
The three major types of portfolios are working portfolios, display portfolios, and assessment portfolios. Although the types are distinct in theory, they tend to overlap in practice. Consequently, a district's program may include several different types of portfolios, serving several different purposes. [2]
A career is an individual's metaphorical "journey" through learning, work and other aspects of life. There are a number of ways to define career and the term is used in a variety of ways.
Situated learning is a theory that explains an individual's acquisition of professional skills and includes research on apprenticeship into how legitimate peripheral participation leads to membership in a community of practice. Situated learning "takes as its focus the relationship between learning and the social situation in which it occurs".
A résumé, sometimes spelled resume, is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons, but most often they are used to secure new employment.
An electronic portfolio is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually but not only on the Web.
Electronic assessment, also known as digital assessment, e-assessment, online assessment or computer-based assessment, is the use of information technology in assessment such as educational assessment, health assessment, psychiatric assessment, and psychological assessment. This covers a wide range of activities ranging from the use of a word processor for assignments to on-screen testing. Specific types of e-assessment include multiple choice, online/electronic submission, computerized adaptive testing such as the Frankfurt Adaptive Concentration Test, and computerized classification testing.
Staffing is the process of finding the right worker with appropriate qualifications or experience and recruiting them to fill a job position or role. Through this process, organizations acquire, deploy, and retain a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization's effectiveness. In management, staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly.
Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in choosing people for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases, public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies such as Executive search in the case of more senior roles, are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based recruitment is now widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
An online school teaches students entirely or primarily online or through the Internet. It has been defined as "education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are separated from the instructor and to support regular and substantive interaction between the students. Online education exists all around the world and is used for all levels of education. This type of learning enables the individuals to earn transferable credits, take recognized examinations, and advance to the next level of education over the Internet.
Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature rather than content pertaining to a company, organization or institution. Personal web pages are primarily used for informative or entertainment purposes but can also be used for personal career marketing, social networking with other people with shared interests, or as a space for personal expression.
Soft skills, also known as power skills, common skills, essential skills, or core skills, are psychosocial skills generally applicable to all professions. These include critical thinking, problem solving, public speaking, professional writing, teamwork, digital literacy, leadership, professional attitude, work ethic, career management and intercultural fluency. This is in contrast to hard skills, which are specific to individual professions.
Job hunting, job seeking, or job searching is the act of looking for employment, due to unemployment, underemployment, discontent with a current position, or a desire for a better position. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain a job interview with an employer which may lead to getting hired. The job hunter or seeker typically first looks for job vacancies or employment opportunities.
Individual Learning Plan or ILP is a user (student) specific program or strategy of education or learning that takes into consideration the student's strengths and weaknesses. While normal classroom or distance education is based on the premise that all should get equal attention, be exposed to the same curriculum and evaluated on the same pattern, ILP presumes that the needs of individual students are different, and thus, must be differently addressed. Emphasis on the student's role in the learning experience has been shown in research to be crucial to a productive learning experience.
Digital literacy is an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information using typing or digital media platforms. It is a combination of both technical and cognitive abilities in using information and communication technologies to create, evaluate, and share information.
An edublog is a blog created for educational purposes. Edublogs archive and support student and teacher learning by facilitating reflection, questioning by self and others, collaboration and by providing contexts for engaging in higher-order thinking. Edublogs proliferated when blogging architecture became more simplified and teachers perceived the instructional potential of blogs as an online resource. The use of blogs has become popular in education institutions including public schools and colleges. Blogs can be useful tools for sharing information and tips among co-workers, providing information for students, or keeping in contact with parents. Common examples include blogs written by or for teachers, blogs maintained for the purpose of classroom instruction, or blogs written about educational policy. Educators who blog are sometimes called edubloggers.
Authentic assessment is the measurement of "intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful" Authentic assessment can be devised by the teacher, or in collaboration with the student by engaging student voice. When applying authentic assessment to student learning and achievement, a teacher applies criteria related to “construction of knowledge, disciplined inquiry, and the value of achievement beyond the school.”
Career counseling is a type of advice-giving and support provided by career counselors to their clients, to help the clients manage their journey through life, learning and work changes (career). This includes career exploration, making career choices, managing career changes, lifelong career development and dealing with other career-related issues. There is no agreed definition of the role of a career or employment counsellor worldwide, mainly due to conceptual, cultural and linguistic differences. However, the terminology of 'career counseling' typically denotes a professional intervention which is conducted either one-on-one or in a small group. Career counseling is related to other types of counseling. What unites all types of professional counseling is the role of practitioners, who combine giving advice on their topic of expertise with counseling techniques that support clients in making complex decisions and facing difficult situations.
An artist's portfolio is an edited collection of an artist's best artwork intended to showcase their style or method of work. A portfolio is used by artists to show employers their versatility by showing different samples of current work. Typically, the work reflects an artist's best work or a depth in one specific area of work.
Social learning tools are tools used for pedagogical and andragogical purposes that utilize social software and/or social media in order to facilitate learning through interactions between individuals and systems. The idea of setting up "social learning tools" is to make education more convenient and widespread. It also allows an interaction between users and/or the software which can bring a different aspect to learning. People can acquire knowledge by distance learning tools, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, Khan Academy and so on. Social learning tools may mediate in formal or informal learning environments to help create connections between learners, instructors and information. These connections form dynamic knowledge networks. Social learning tools are used in schools for teaching/learning and in businesses for training. Within a school environment, the use of social learning tools can affect not only the user (student) but his/her caretaker as well as his/her instructor. It brings a different approach to the traditional way of learning which affects the student and his/her support circle. Companies also use social learning tools. They used them to improve knowledge transfer within departments and across teams. Businesses use a variety of these tools to create a social learning environment. They are also used in company settings to help improve team work, problem solving, and performance in stressful situations.
Turn 2 U Inc. dba The Last Mile (TLM) is an Oakland, CA based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide opportunities for personal and professional growth for justice-impacted individuals through education and technology training. The Last Mile is celebrating more than a decade as an organization, originating with its first program in San Quentin State Prison with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. TLM has leveraged the power of public-private partnerships with Department of corrections and industry-leading companies to build and expand its programs. Programs are currently operating in 16 facilities across 7 states in the United States, including California, Indiana, Oklahoma, Michigan, North Dakota, Montana and Massachusetts. TLM has been able to expand its purpose, "To Imagine, Build, and Open Doors," into other facilities through these partnerships as well as funding and employment opportunities from the technology sector. Through in-prison education, transitional support, and workforce reentry, TLM is disrupting the system of mass incarceration across the United States. In-classroom curricula and course material prepare students for meaningful employment in modern job roles including web development, software engineering, and audio and video production. Students cultivate personal and professional development in alignment with the technical education and with the support of TLM reentry staff, volunteers, and a community founded on shared lived experience.
21st century skills comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions identified as requirements for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of an international movement focusing on the skills required for students to prepare for workplace success in a rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork, which differ from traditional academic skills as these are not content knowledge-based.