140 Characters or Less: Career Exploration Using Twitter

By Allison Rosemond

As a Middle School (Grades 6 to 8) Career Specialist, it is difficult to find ways to enhance the career exploration process for students. At our school, however, virtual job shadowing has become a great way to incorporate technology and provide a unique extended learning opportunity (ELO).

The goal was to create a project where students can learn about careers in a fun, engaging way, without having to leave campus. And, I wanted the project format to be familiar to students. After researching ways to use social media in career exploration, I found a virtual job shadowing model using Twitter, previously done by the Southeast Florida Information Network. With permission from the Manager of Staff Development Services, I tweaked the final version of the project to meet the needs and capabilities of our students.

Planning for the project involved identifying needed resources. Participating employees would need to have access to the Internet and Twitter. I chose employees from the Information Technology, Business, Marketing & Sales, and Arts, A/V Technology & Communications career clusters. Likewise, students would need to have access to the Internet, so I chose our Keyboarding classes. To recruit participants, I called businesses and spoke with a human resource or public relations representative to explain the project. I then corresponded with and secured confirmation from individual employees. We had seven participating businesses and 15 employees overall.

I worked with the co-ordinator of the local Regional Education Center to offer an orientation for participating employees to learn details of the virtual job shadowing project and receive a Twitter “crash course” about setting up an account and sending tweets. Employees were required to make their Twitter accounts public for the duration of the project. On the day of the project, each class received an introduction to the project and a 3-5 minute Twitter tutorial. The first class received a similar tweet from each employee:

“Welcome to my day! Just started (specific task) as (job title) for (company).” #GMSvirtualjs

Each subsequent class reviewed the timeline before sending new tweets. The students were engaged and excited as the tweets came in. One by one, students came to the front of the room to send tweets, as the Twitter feed shown on the Promethean Board for all to see. Students enjoyed receiving pictures taken of office amenities, employees’ office spaces, and colleagues. During the activity, students conducted research, using O*Net (the Occupational Information Network database), on a career of one of the employees.

Success was measured by how well the students were engaged during the project and from feedback from a participant survey.

Readers who wish to duplicate this project should consider the following:

• A classroom environment, with no more than 35 students, works well.
• Have students send tweets from one computer, so the supervising adult does not have to monitor several computers.
• Span the project across an entire day, not just a few class periods, to allow students to learn about a greater variety of job tasks within a career.
• Have a clear explanation of what information employees should share.
• Allow employees to view the research activity, so they have an understanding of what students will learn.
• Allow students to take ownership of this project; have fewer teacher prompts, more student-directed tweets.

If readers would like to view the research activity or participant survey, email the author at arosemond@greenville.k12.sc.us.

Allison Rosemond, Career Specialist at Greer Middle IB School in Greenville, SC, USA, has a M.Ed. in Counsellor Education with a Community Counselling specialty from Clemson University. She is a Licensed Professional Counsellor and National Certified Counsellor. She is a Global Career Development Facilitator.