Successful College Student's Pyramid - tips and ideas

College students, and high school students for that matter, have a lot of things to organize and prioritize. School work, classes, projects, homework, jobs, sports, relationships, parties, fun, sports all take time and effort. Below is an infographic that gives some information and tips and ideas on helping students manage their time, get organized, and prioritize things to be successful.




Presented By: Online Colleges

Zinch - college admissions and search help for students

 

Zinch is a free service for students in high school applying to college. Students can connect with over 700 colleges that participate with Zinch, create a profile of themselves on the site for colleges to see, and even get information on financial aid and scholarships.

Some of my students have used it before and found it easy to use and helpful in their college search and application process.

College is not for everyone - some quick thoughts.

image from http://professorjosh.wordpress.com

College is not for everyone. But, education policy loves to say that we are making students "college ready", whatever that really means. We need to focus on giving students certain knowledge and skills, but college ready is not the only focus we should have.

A report I saw today (sorry, can't find link) said that 2.1 million college students are MIA. They were tracking the number of college freshmen, and then the number of graduates. The data is hard to get because there isn't any true data collection. I'm sure everyone knows some students that have not finished college. College isn't for everyone.

College is expensive. If you really don't know what you want to do, should you really spend all that money to "find yourself", or would it be better to work for a while and explore things. Some students are not mature or socially or emotionally ready for college. Some students have interests and job wants that don't require college.

I think we need more career/job training in schools. We need plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and carpenters. They make good money too. We really need skilled machinists in this country. CT has a huge shortage. Engineers I know tell me that their companies can't find enough machinists, and they make very good money.

College is great for some people. It's not for everyone. Schools should not focus on "College Ready", we should focus on "future ready." We should focus on giving students the skills to succeed in college, technical school, apprenticeships, or any job.


Related:

10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future

nextSTEP magazine and site - for life after high school

nextSTEP magazine is a great resource for high school students. The magazine itself is not free, although many schools get bulk subscriptions. Their website, http://www.nextstepmagazine.com, does have a lot of free resources for students.

Their tagline is "your life, after high school" and the magazine and web site have advice and information on careers, college planning and more. College search, college planning steps, career descriptions, articles on college life, careers, how to be successful in college, and much more are all on the site.

Our school has a bulk subscription, so the students can pick up a copy in the counselors' offices. Many of the students prefer to just go to the web site. The site has more detailed information than the magazine, along with videos and links to other resources. The site does has all of the articles from the print magazine.

This is a must have resource for high school students.

Free booklets with high school and college success tips for students

Barcharts is a company that prints up those colorful laminated quick study booklets you see at the bookstore and even supermarket. I've purchased a few over the years (Physics, Computer, Accounting) and found them to be very useful. They have quick study booklets on almost any topic from Biology to Physics to History, Economics, Cooking, Computers and much more. Different titles come different sizes, including full size (8 1/2" x 11"), pocket size, poster and more. They average about $6 each.

They also offer some free quick study booklets on some topics that are very useful for educators and students. The ones that I always share with my students are: Keys to High School Success, Keys to College Success, and Surviving the College Ride. They all include very useful tips on studying, time management, how to get help, and much more. They are all available as FREE PDF file downloads.

There are also some fun free ones including Stupid Jokes, Umpire and Referee Signals, and Ramen Noodle Recipes.

Share this with your students.

Transitioning to College - Helping students Succeed - college library help

Transitioning to College Helping You Succeed is a site that has some great resources and tips to help students go from high school to college successfully. Specifically, it deals with the differences between libraries at the college level.

There are educator resources and activities to due with students to help prepare them and there are student learning modules that follow two college freshmen as they learn tips for success.

College Tips from Google - great resource for students

Google has added another great education resource to it's portfolio, College Tips.

College Tips has tips, products, and services to make life easier for college students, and college bound students. This is a great site for high school students applying to college, current college students, and college seniors starting their job hunt.

There are lots of tips and students can share their own tips with each other.

Some of the tips: getting organized, staying on schedule, having a professional email address (vs. Imawesome etc.), campus guides, search tips and much more. The tips are organized by category: "Prospective College Students", "Current College Students", and "College Seniors".

There are some great tips and ideas here. The tips from other students are excellent. I wish I had some when I was going through all of this college stuff.

Share the site with high school and college students you know!

Technology in use in Engineering

I have a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and I worked for 10 years as an engineer before becoming an educator. I still do some consulting and keep up to date in the field. With all the talk about educational technology, I thought it would be nice to share some of the technology currently being used by engineers so that educators have an idea of what college students will be learning.

Engineers, like everyone else, use office productivity tools (MS Office, Google Docs), email, and the internet. In fact, the internet is one of the engineers' best tools. Research, online catalogs from vendors, online reference guides and calculators, and discussion groups and forums are all used on a daily basis.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) is the next major technology that engineers use. Products are designed in 3D on the computer, analyzed, fit checked, and simulated before prototypes are even built. Multi-physics simulation software, Finite Element Analysis, and Computational Fluid Dynamics software are critical to being able to design, analyze, and test products virtually before spending more money on manufacturing and live testing. They can analyze and simulate almost everything that a product would go through, virtually.

There is also Bill of Material (BOM) software to keep track of all the pieces and parts, Manufacturing software to help the engineers figure out the best way to build a product and then programming the equipment to do the work.

3D printers are used to make functional models of the product for early testing. They either strip away material, or lay down material (a plastic) to create the parts. These 3D printers can fit on a desktop. There are also 3D scanners that can be used to take a real part and turn it into a 3D model in the computer.

When I worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, we did everything on the computer. Design, analysis, simulation, manufacturing layout, communications, coordination, and more. Even our manuals and references were all online. If we printed something out, it had a watermark on it saying that the computer network should always be checked for updated information.

Computers and software have always been important in engineering, but as computers have gotten more powerful, so has software and the tools that can be used. Things change quickly, so engineers have to be able to learn new software and tools on their own.

As a high school physics teacher, I teach 90% seniors. This means that I am usually the last science teacher that they will have in high school (they may be taking two sciences). I try to expose them to project based learning (how WPI does things and how engineers work) and different types of software and systems that are out there for science and engineering. I try to teach them how to do their own research and how to learn things on their own, because I know that is what they will need to be able to do in college and in the workplace.

I also try to encourage students who are interested in and good at science to look at engineering as a career. Our world needs more engineers to solve the world's problems and continue with improving our standard of life.

Engineering is obviously not the only career field using technology - medicine, manufacturing, even retail, all use technology in ever increasing ways. This means that the more our students are exposed to technology, the better prepared they will be for college and the workplace.

More information on engineering and engineering resources for educators:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/engineering-resources.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering

Virtual, LIVE, College Fairs

Not every student can visit every college they want to. Not every college will show up at the local college fair. College fairs can be noisy, crowded, and difficult to navigate. Some students get too nervous to talk to college reps at a fair. So skip them and try a virtual, live college fair instead.

Educationxpo and CollegeWeekLive are two sites that I found out about today. They both have upcoming, live on-line events and both have a large number of colleges participating. What is nice is that college reps will be online live to answer questions from students. There is a lot of information available about each college and the two sites both have other resources and references available on them.

Educationxpo has a live event coming up on November 12th, 2009.

CollegeWeekLive's next live event is November 4-7, 2009.

Take a look around the sites now, share them with others, and register for the FREE events.

Textbook resources for college students

College textbook costs continue to go up. Even more frustrating for students is spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks and then not even using them in class. If they are lucky, they can get 40% of the purchase price back by selling it to the bookstore.

There are options out there though. Here are some tips and resources.

1. Buy used whenever possible - it will save you money.

2. Check with the professor on the first day of class to see if you will actually be using the book in the class. Also check with the professor to see if you really need the latest version or not.

3. Share a textbook with a roomate or friend, thereby sharing the cost.

4. Use online, free textbooks and web sites as a resource if you don't need the actual textbook.

5. Check the campus bulletin boards and web sites for students selling their old textbooks - this can be cheaper than buying used books from the bookstore.

6. Check out these free resources for saving money on textbooks:

Chegg (www.chegg.com) This online service allows students to rent books at a huge savings over purchasing the book. There is also the option to buy at the end of the rental. Chegg also plants a tree for every book rented, bought, sold, or donated.

Campus Book Swap (www.campusbookswap.org) Campus Book Swap acts as a bulletin board, helping students buy and sell used textbooks. Students post their book with a description and asking price and other students can purchase the books from them. Books are sorted by school, which makes it easier to find the books a student needs.

Flat World Knowledge (www.flatworldknowledge.com) This is an open source textbook site that allows instructors to select free textbooks that are written by experts and peer reviewed. Educators can add their own materials to the books and mix-and-match chapters. There are various formats to use and there is also a user discussion forum.

Advice.com - great article on college textbook tips.

Share this information with your high school seniors and any college students you know.

What colleges and employers are looking for in graduates

I just read some research and articles about what colleges and employers are looking for in graduates. Content knowledge was 5th or 6th on the list. They both want to see well-rounded students, with a variety of skills.

They both want students who have:
1) academic achievement
2) work experience and internships
3) clubs and organization membership that shows leadership
4) community service

The reports all say the same thing about other skills colleges want students to have:
1) communications - personal and electronic
2) teamwork skills
3) problem solving skills
4) critical thinking skills

Employers have also said that they expect students to have a basic knowledge of internet research, computer operating system use, and office productivity software.

This means high schools and colleges have to teach our students all of these qualities and skills as part of our curriculum.

One way we can do this is through using technology in the classroom, project based learning with hands on projects, cooperative learning where students work in teams and help themselves.

We can also motivate our students by letting them know what colleges and employers are looking for and by helping them understand what they are learning, and WHY they are learning it.