How Teachers Can Talk About The Future Of Work With Students

We need to start talking about careers and the future of work as early as possible. That's because "there is a disconnect between the careers that primary-age children are most interested in and those the economy needs. a similar misalignment among young people in secondary schools." (Drawing the Future Report, 2018)

These findings were reiterated by Dr Ger Graus, Global Director of Education at Kidzania who I interviewed recently. A passionate advocate of social mobility and careers education he said many things that resonated with me during our discussion. But it was his comment "children can only aspire to what they know exists" that stuck in my head. It really brought home to me the importance of starting careers education as soon as possible.

The Future Of Work

Talking to young people about the future of work is important. Using resources like our growing collection of bite-sized careers and skills videos and animations, Skillsumo can get young people thinking about the world of work.

Recently we partnered with pwc to create a series of animations developed from their thought leadership around The Future of Work.

The four bite-sized animations explore the future of work, skills of the future, careers of the future and humans versus automation. The videos have been developed to be used in upper primary and secondary classes to start conversations or introduce units of workaround: future work, careers, technology, skills, globalisation, technology, or the fourth industrial revolution.

Using Video In The Classroom

Research into the best use of video in an education context is clear. To get maximum engagement with video content you need to:

• Engage with the video before you watch
• Explore big ideas while you watch, and
• Engage in activities that empower you to take the themes and ideas further after you watch.

Here are three activities that can be used to engage with the Future of Work videos from Skillsumo.

Engage

Make Predictions

• Ask students to make predictions about what the animation is about.
• Prompt students to explain why they made the prediction.
• Use the title of the animation, the image from the thumbnail or stills as source material.
• After watching discuss how accurate or inaccurate the students predictions were.

Explore

Pause and Interact

• Pause the video at different stages.
• Ask purposeful open and closed questions.
• Mix questions up. Ask factual, “What if?” and probing questions, or questions that allow for students to make predictions or offer their opinion.

Empower

Sound Bites

• Ask students to use the phrase “Did you know…?” to create short sound bites to share with the class.
• The sound bite will relate to the animations overall theme.
• Technology will enhance this activity. Ask students to use mobile phones or tablets to record sound bites and then share them with the class. They could use tools like Flipgrid, Google docs or Microsoft Office Sharepoint to share their content.

Extension

To take this further we recommend:

• Asking students to explore some of the interesting careers at pwc that are also featured in the series, or
• Using the Fourth Industrial Revolution Video series to explore themes around work, globalisation and future careers. This series has a facilitators guide to help educators get started.

Get Access To The Videos Here