Jobs I Can Do : Electronic Portfolio

Jobs that I Can Do: An Electronic Portfolio

Description of Project:

The Employability Institute is comprised of 19-21 year old students with mental disabilities. This program is operated in collaboration with the St. Lucie County School Board and Indian River Community College and is located on the IRCC campus. The goal of our program is to provide these mentally handicapped students with employability skills and train them for a job upon graduation.

Students with cognitive deficits require authentic experiences, hands on activities and materials to be able to effectively learn and transfer that learning to other environments. The digital camera, software and other materials provided by the grant will be instrumental in the authentic instruction of our students. They will learn to take pictures while on Community Based Instruction. We will teach the students how to take pictures of different jobs that they are exploring for employment purposes. We will teach the students to put the pictures into Power Point, Multimedia LabV or Tool Factory Workshop to build an electronic portfolio of jobs that they have been successful at. We will teach the students how to burn a CD of their portfolio depicting different jobs that they have been trained to do. They will be taught how to use the electronic portfolio in job interviews. Additionally, they will use the camera to build visual supports that will assist with retelling steps of job tasks using Tool Factory Workshop, we will use the camera and Tool Factory Workshop, Multimedia LabV and/or PowerPoint software to create job related social stories. This will reinforce student specific authentic job and social skills, that are needed for employment.

We have a professor who is skilled in technology and is currently working with our students to learn the uses of technology as it relates to the world of work.

The students participate in auditing different classes at the IRCC main campus based on individual interest to encourage life long learning. The major focus of the program is on learning employability skills and hands on job training. The goal of the Employment Institute is for all of our students to be in paid competitive employment at the conclusion of the program.