Use 'Print preview' to check the number of pages and printer settings.
Print functionality varies between browsers.
Printable page generated Friday, 26 April 2024, 8:33 PM
Week 7: Being digital: making it work for you
Introduction
Over the last six weeks you have been encouraged to reflect on the ways you interact and succeed in a digital world. You have also been given an opportunity to develop your skills and knowledge.
This week you are going to engage with two case studies looking at how developing skills and working online has impacted individuals lives. This will remind you of your own experience of the course and help you to think about how you might apply your learning to work, study or everyday life.
By the end of this week, you should:
- have had the opportunity to reflect on how your digital skills relate to everyday life, study and work.
Case study 1 – Banjar
Banjar has noticed a great improvement in his confidence online. He has recognised that what he has learned will have a great impact on his career and home life.
Banjar now keeps an eye on his digital footprint and feels more confident about being able to improve it.
To help him in his career, Banjar has learned how to harness social media to showcase his professional skills, knowledge and experience as a chef. He plans to use LinkedIn to do this and to connect with a wider community to advertise his cooking. But he is as passionate about football as he is about cooking, and he would like a career change and move into football marketing. He has set up a Facebook account to keep up to date with the football sport industry and he has started writing a blog.
At the beginning of the course, Banjar felt vulnerable online, particularly when it came to providing personal or financial information. Knowing how to assess who or what to trust, and understanding what he can do to protect herself, has improved his confidence. He now uses strong passwords and has learned how to protect his computer from viruses.
When he searched online, Banjar used to feel quite overwhelmed with the amount of information available. This course has taught him how to search more effectively and filter information. This has been invaluable when he’s been searching for jobs in the Football industry.
1.1 Finding the right information
Banjar’s primary motivation for learning more about digital skills is to help him pursue a career in marketing for the football sport industry. He knows that as well as looking for job opportunities, he also needs to understand exactly what the job entails and find out what skills he will need.
Much of the information he needs can be found online; however, finding it can take time. Developing his skills in finding information, such as those listed below, will result in being able to search far more effectively.
- Keywords: using focused words and phrases for his search.
- Filtering his results by location.
- Filtering his results by time.
With so much information available online it is also important to know which sites are the most trustworthy. The most reliable websites will be those belonging to:
- reputable organisations/companies/industries
- government departments
- training and skills organisations
- industry specialists or experts.
A great deal of information can also come from connecting with people online and hearing about their own experiences and advice. Banjar could benefit from a more human angle but would need to be aware that these will be opinions, rather than fact.
In the following activities you are asked to offer Banjar some guidance on searching for reliable careers information online.
Activity 1 Choosing the right keywords and phrases
Banjar is about to start some online research into football careers. He’s particularly interested in marketing and needs to work in the UK. How would you to advise him on:
- the most useful search terms he might use
- how he can limit his search?
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes in the box below.
Discussion
You may have mentioned some of the following search terms:
- marketing
- ‘Football”
- ‘soccer sports’
- careers.
You might have included ‘jobs’ in the search terms. This is likely to generate job opportunities, rather than advice on careers.
Banjar could use an advanced search to limit his search to:
- a particular time period – he would want to find recent information so could limit results to the past six months or year
- a particular location – he could limit the search to Myanmar websites or particular country websites
Activity 2 Knowing what information to trust
Banjar has found some websites that he thinks might help:
- Autosport forum – http://forums.autosport.com/ topic/ 192442-one-does-not-simply-get-a-job-in-f1/
- What do I need for a career in Football? – https://www.careersinfootball.com/
- Football Marketing Magazine – https://www.footballmarketingmagazine.com/
Have a look at each of the sites and offer some advice on:
- what type of information each site offers
- how trustworthy that information is
- how helpful the information is to Banjar in researching careers.
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes.
Discussion
The three websites all offer different types of information and vary in relation to how trustworthy they are:
Soccer forum
https://www.bigsoccer.com/ forums/
There might be some useful information here, but Banjar needs to remember that this is a forum and contains opinion, rather than fact. Some of the information might not be as trustworthy as it could be, as we don’t know how much experience the people in the forum have. The site is also over a year old and things might have changed since the comments were posted.
What do I need for a career in football? – https://www.careersinfootball.com/
This website provides comprehensive information on careers in the soccer industry. This is a reliable source of information and would help Banjar to focus on what he needs to do in order to pursue a career in the sector. It provides helpful guidance and links to relevant websites.
https://www.footballmarketingmagazine.com/
This is a football marketing magazine site, so will provide lots of topical news and discussion features. It will give Banjar a much more in depth understanding of football marketing which is likely to be reliable as well as providing excellent insight into what issues to mention in an application and at interview. It would also be a good source to quote to demonstrate that he has carried out thorough research.
Case Study 2 – Zin Min Thant
Zin Min Thant has become much more aware of what the internet has to offer and is reasonably comfortable with email. As a businessman he already did his banking online, and some recruitment, but he has now joined a special interest group of engineering trainers and is regularly posting the site. This has made it easier to receive industry news and share good practice. His background is in engineering before he became a businessman.
When presented with the variety of tools and apps available online Zin Min Thant was amazed to find out that there were a number that could help him save time in certain situations. For example, using his phone to view his Facebook page saves powering up his computer all the time. He’s also thrilled with bookmarking sites that allow him to track and manage the information he finds online. This makes it much quicker to find things again when he needs them.
Zin Min Thant is very keen to find courses and free learning that would help him to learn the skills he needs to become a trainer within the field of railway engineering. The internet has proved to be a treasure trove in this respect. Through taking this online course he has learnt how to search the internet more effectively and he now feels confident at being able to filter his searches to find more specific courses and resources.
3.1 Investigating study
Zin Min Thant’s confidence in the digital world has improved very quickly. He now wants to move forward to progress with his studies in the most efficient way.
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are resources (content, documents, tools and media) that can be used freely for teaching, learning and research. The OER movement began in the early part of the 21st century and has seen substantial growth over the ensuing year.
Today, those who want to develop skills can find courses and materials which cost nothing and can often be studied flexibly.
A number of websites have been developed to offer these courses in meaningful ways, and many offer some kind of reward or recognition for completion.
OERs are an ideal opportunity for universities and educational organisations to provide tasters of the learning they have available. OpenLearn and FutureLearn are examples of OER websites from The Open University. Studying in this way can introduce you to the material on offer, help you to prepare for study and give you an opportunity to experience study for yourself. If you are new to study, or have not studied for a long time, these free courses are ideal preparation.
More informal learning material can be found on websites like YouTube. Universities also use YouTube and iTunes U to showcase their learning materials. Have a look at:
In the activity below you are asked to provide Zin Min Thant with some advice on how to find courses and resources that can help him to progress in his career.
Activity 3 Finding online courses
In Week 5 you explored your information landscape. Use this knowledge to advise Zin Min Thant on how to find free courses and resources that could help him to progress in his career as a trainer.
- a.Look at what is available on OpenLearn. Search the site to find resources and courses that might help Zin Min Thant to pursue his goal to become a trainer in the engineering sector.
- b.Search online for free courses and recommend three sites which Zin Min Thant can visit to find courses he might be interested in.
- c.Search YouTube for videos that might help him find out how engineers are trained in Myanmar and across the world.
Use the box below to make some notes.
As you search, use your reflective journal to make a note of any sites you find that you think would be useful to you, either now or in the future.
Discussion
We recommend that you access the links below by opening them in a new window or tab. You can do this by right-clicking with your mouse or holding the Ctrl key, or Cmd key on a Mac, when you click on the link.
OpenLearn
You may have searched for resources and courses that focused on Zin Min Thant’s own study requirements. A couple of examples include:
You may have searched for resources and courses that focused on Zin Min Thant’s aim to be develop as a trainer. Some examples include:
- Learning to teach: Making sense of learning to teach
- Teachers sharing resources online
- Learning and practice: Agency and identities
Free courses
You may have found some of the following websites that either provide or direct people to free learning:
YouTube
YouTube is a great place to find resources that can show you how engineers are trained across the world and highlight good practice. A few examples:
3 Reflection
This week you have had a chance to use your skills to help Banjar, and Zin Min Thant to:
- develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in a digital world
- apply their learning to different areas of their lives – work, study and everyday life
- improve their confidence when engaging with an online environment.
This will hopefully have helped to remind you of the things you’ve learned over the last six weeks.
Activity 4 Your digital skills: how confident are you now?
Think about your level of confidence at the beginning of the course, and think about where you feel you have improved your confidence and skills the most.
Write some notes in your reflective journal.
Discussion
Your response to this activity will be a personal one. The important thing is to know how to identify areas where you have improved.
Reflecting on your learning at different stages can also help you to see how far your knowledge and skills are developing. This goes a long way towards improving your confidence.
Here are Kyaw Win’s reflections about this week:
“This week I found out how Banjar and Zin Min Thant have got on with the course and how they're using what they've learned to move ahead with their goals. I also feel that I’m making progress with my career plans as I’ve started to study a short online course on marketing. I realise that developing my digital skills has really started to pay off and I’m using what I've learned in all sorts of ways.”
4 This week's quiz
Check what you’ve learned this week by taking the end-of-week quiz.
Open the quiz in a new window or tab then come back here when you’ve finished.
5 Summary
This week you have had the chance to see how the course has helped Banjar, and Zin Min Thant You have been reminded of:
- how they have improved their skills and confidences
- the relevance of digital skills to work, everyday life and study.
You have also had the chance to use your own learning to advise Banjar and Zin Min Thant on how to move forward and use what they’ve learned to achieve their goals.
You have also had a chance to reflect on how your own confidence has improved since you started the course.
In Week 8 you will have a chance to reflect on your own learning in greater detail.