Start of the Year Idea!

Going over all my options on how to start the year is exciting.  I want to start my new classroom off on the right foot while engaging my students and making what they learn relevant to what they need to learn.  So...I've got it!  I thought of something exciting and interesting that I hope my students will really benefit from.  I will start the year off first by having them tell me about themselves.  Not the standard name, favorite color, birthday but going deeper like what is your favorite video game (I teach game and simulation after all), music, hobbies, sports, etc.  Okay not that different from what a lot of teachers are doing, right?

What happens next is the exciting part though.  I want to start the course off with students doing searches on indeed, internships.com, and career builder for actual game development companies hiring in Florida.  We are lucky enough to have big companies like EA Sports in Orlando to look at.  I want students to look at actual CURRENT job postings and see what sounds interesting to them.  What do they see themselves doing?  Once they find something I want them to really break down the posting into what they would need to know and show to get this job one day.  We will begin a digital portfolio at the beginning of the program (not a final assignment 4 years in) and base their weekly topic assignments and semester projects on what they need to show that potential employer.  I want to give the students options and build their time with me around what they want to do after HS (i.e. the student that wants to be a QA Tester should know about Excel in addition to gaming, the student that will write design docs should know how to use Word in addition to design, students that want to do programming should know languages like C# and Visual Basic, and it goes on).  

Basing what students do on what interests them and what they actually will use in the future is key to me.  I don't want to bore my students into submission.  I want to have real relationships with them where I help them succeed in doing whatever it is they want to do.