How to Be a Better Listener

There are some simple steps to becoming a better listener, but they take practice to achieve results. Here are some ways to listen better whether in a large group or one-to-one.

In a large group situation, such as a lecture or training session, try these exercises:

• Be patient for the entire message
• Be aware of speech cues (who, what, where, when, why, how)
• Listen for ideas, not just facts (stories, reasons, goals help us remember facts)
Try these guidelines when talking with someone on the telephone or face-to-face. Practice these for a week or two and you will soon realize that they work.

Verify:
“So, you're saying that. . .”
“If I understand correctly, you said. . .”

Question:“What do you mean when you say. . .?”
“Have you really spent. . .?”
6 Cornell Local Roads Program
2 – Oral Communication
Acknowledge: Look at the speaker and nod
Occasionally say, “hmmm” or “oh, right”

Silence: This allows you to give your undivided attention to the other person. You may give some non-verbal cues that you are hearing, such as nodding your head, smiling, opening or closing your eyes. This method is especially useful when people come to you with strong feelings, either positive or negative. Their first need is simply to share the feelings and to have someone listen.

Encourage:

“Tell me more”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“Want to have lunch and talk?”

􀀹 Tips
It is estimated that we use only about 25 percent of our listening capacity. Here are three tips to help you increase your ability to listen by 50 percent:
• Look at the speaker (benefit = 15 percent)
• Ask questions (benefit = 15 percent)
• Take notes (benefit = 20 percent)

Improvement occurs only if you practice these good listening skills. Try one of them for about three months. It takes at least that long to create a new habit. If you are a good list taker already, then practice asking questions to clarify what you hear. Avoid trying to implement all three tips at the same time. Success with one new habit will encourage you to try others.
Hearing is natural. Listening is a skill that we learn. Remember: we listen more than any other human activity except breathing!
Cornell

Eliminating Gender Bias and Stereotypes in Career Choices

When you are counseling children about their career choices, you will
be faced with the problem of gender bias and stereotypes. Certain jobs
are commonly believed to be for men only while others are supposed
to be suited only for women. 

For example: It is often thought that a woman’s place is in the home doing domestic chores. Men, on the other hand, are supposed to be engineers, pilots, builders, and so on. They are not expected to take an active role in domestic chores. One of your roles as a caregiver is to educate both boys and girls that
one can do any job for which one meets the requirements. They must
understand that gender should not be a major determinant in career
and vocation selection.

Gender is the social dimension of being male and female. There are two
ways of looking at this definition:

• Gender identity is the sense of being male or female, which
most children acquire by the time they are three years old.

• Gender roles refer to a set of expectations regarding how
females or males should think, act, or feel.

Gender bias begins early in life when parents start dressing children
differently depending on whether they are male or female, giving them
different toys, treating them differently, and having different expectations
for them. The differences are reinforced as children watch and
imitate their parents fulfilling these traditional roles. Culture, the
schools, peers, and the media reinforce what children have learned
from their parents.

Gender stereotypes are the beliefs and impressions that people have
about males and females. Males are believed to be dominant, aggressive,
independent, and enduring go-getters. Females are widely
believed to be soft, caring, more helpful, weak, and emotional. It is
assumed that females are not ambitious, are unable to do certain jobs,
and want to stay at home and nurture children.

Job Volunteering

Youth can assist in a company and do some tasks without expecting
pay but to gain experience in doing the job. This can be done on a part-time
basis.

In the countryside, there may be a limited number of career possibilities.
Church and school careers might be common because almost all
communities have a faith-based organization and a school to cater to
children there. These institutions could also have a secretary or receptionist.
Youth can find out more about these careers by talking with the
people who work in them.

As a caregiver, you can help children and youth learn about careers that
might be possible for them outside the community. Children may be
interested in a career that would involve going to a larger community,
either for training or to work. If this is the case, they will need support
not only to learn more about the career but to move outside of their
home community. Think about how you might help Thuli, in the story
below, fulfil her dream of becoming a teacher.

Can you think of some ways that you could help Thuli become comfortable
with moving to the city to take advantage of her scholarship?

Perhaps you have a friend in the city who would help her get acquainted
or know of an organization where she could meet some friends.
Maybe she just needs someone to go with her for the first few days until
she is settled.

Job Shadowing

Attach a youth for a day or more to a person who has a career that the
youth is interested in. For example, a youth might dress appropriately
for working in an electricity station, start the day with the person he or
she is attached to, help with the work the person being shadowed does
and so on. A youth attached to a receptionist might work in an office
taking calls, recording messages, and receiving visitors.

Identify individuals with careers of interest. Invite them to address the
youth about their own careers and to bring posters, objects, and
audio/video tapes to listen to or view, as well as reading materials
about the careers for display or distribution.

Youth may not admit that they are afraid to leave their familiar surroundings
for a new career, but we need to be aware of that possibility
and provide all the help we can for them in making the transition.
While they are at the stage of exploring careers, introducing them to a
friendly and helpful career mentor can make a big difference.

Helping Youth Explore Possible Careers

Youth and children have a limited knowledge of the range of possible
occupations and careers. This can contribute to unrealistic career aspirations.
As a caregiver, you will need to ensure that youth have appropriate
career information.

In order to make an informed choice, youth need to have a realistic picture
of occupations they are considering:

The working conditions, the tasks that are involved, the qualifications and education required, the salary, the job opportunities, and so on.

You can help youth gather this information by:

• Collecting and discussing written information with them.
• Going for industrial visits where they will get the information
directly from the employers.
• Inviting different professionals to come and talk to them.
• Helping them find volunteer or part-time work in different
industries.
• Encouraging them to volunteer their services in different
organisations or work centres.
• Encouraging them to share career/vocation information with
one another.
• Pointing out postings on bulletin boards found in shopping
centres.
• Encouraging them to get information through the media.

Finding and Providing Information on Career Possibilities

Our world is full of interesting occupations. The activity that follows
asks you to explore a few of them.

Were some parts of these learning activities difficult to do? Sometimes,
because we are familiar with an occupation, we think we know more
about it than we actually do. It is important that we research new
careers we may hear about, but also that we pay attention to the work
that people do around us: watching what people do and asking lots of
questions.


Sources of Information

Below a listed possible sources of information about careers. 

How many of the following possibilities did you include?

• Local libraries.
• Media advertising (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV).
• Government labour office.
• Shopping markets with bulletin boards for advertising.
• Local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in your
community.
• Churches (the priest, minister, or pastor may be able to help).
• Employment bureaus (for example, TEBA for miners).
• Friends who have careers.
• Current employees of an organisation (a farmer, business person,
medical doctor, teacher, builder, radio announcer, etc.).
• Past employees of an organisation.
• Paying visits to an organisation of your career interest (such
as a hospital for a physiotherapist, radiographer, or nurse).
• From work sites in the immediate community (such as at a
mosque, church, school, or farm).
• Professionals (pilot, engineer, lawyer, etc.).
• Job attachments (such as working with a construction company).
• Internet websites.

As a caregiver, you need to familiarise yourself with these sources so
that you are able to direct children and youth to them when they
require more information than you can give them. You can help them
develop skills in reading, writing, making calls, and searching the internet
to find information on job opportunities.

Personal Exploration

This section begins with an opportunity to explore what
you bring to the area of career guidance, as well as what
you would like to know. It goes on to define what we
mean by the terms "career," "vocational guidance," and
"life skills."

As you begin your work on this unit, take a few moments
to think about your own career experience and what you
can bring from it to your work with youth who are planning
their careers.

We are all different people, with unique abilities and dreams. One of the
biggest challenges in counselling youth about their careers is to be able
to really get to know them: to see their potential and understand their
hopes. As you have worked through the various units in this course,
you have learned various strategies and approaches to help you get to
know children.

Does your list include some of the following?

 
• Giving youth your full attention.
• Listening, not talking or giving advice.
• Being respectful of their ideas.
• Encouraging youth to expand on their statements by asking
questions and checking to see if you are understanding
correctly.
• Helping youth to explore possibilities so they can come to
their own conclusions.

The world of work is changing so quickly that it is difficult to keep
abreast of new career possibilities. While it's useful to know about various
careers, it can be more important to know where to find information
about them.

Career and Vocational Guidance

From the earliest years of our lives, we are asked to consider what we
want to be when we grow up. Parents and guardians carefully plan and
manage their children's educational experiences in the hope of preparing
them for successful careers.

As a caregiver, you are faced with the challenge of helping children and
youth identify and achieve their career goals. Young people tend to have
limited information about the types of jobs that are available to them.
Lack of information leads many to make unrealistic decisions about
careers. Many youth are not sure of what they want to do. Some of
them are not even aware of their own talents. You can help them get the
information they need to make realistic and satisfying career choices.
Another of your roles as a caregiver is to help children and youth develop
the qualities they need to be successful in the job market. Certain
qualities can contribute to success, such as: the willingness to work
hard and do more than the bare minimum; good spoken and written
communication skills; dependability; and the ability to work well with
others.

Career guidance becomes more and more challenging as the realities of
the workplace change. At one time the types of work available and the
skills required changed very little from one generation to another. Now,
times are changing so quickly that it's hard to predict what the next 20,
10, or even 5 years will bring. In these rapidly changing times, qualities
such as flexibility, creativity, and the desire to be a lifelong learner have
become important.

This unit will help you to explore ways that you as a caregiver can help
children and youth to decide on a career plan and gain the skills and
knowledge they need to be successful in the job market, now and in the
future.

Web Technology

The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3 and commonly known as the Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them via hyperlinks.

Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C), wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web.[1] At CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext "... to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will", and they publicly introduced the project in December.[4]
"The World-Wide Web was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture, which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common project."

Function

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in every-day speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of textual documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, transmitted by web browsers and web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of as an application "running" on the Internet.[24]
Viewing a web page on the World Wide Web normally begins either by typing the URL of the page into a web browser, or by following a hyperlink to that page or resource. The web browser then initiates a series of communication messages, behind the scenes, in order to fetch and display it.

Computer Programming

Computer Programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming Language. The purpose of programming is to create a program that exhibits a certain desired behaviour. The process of writing source code often requires expertise in many different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized algorithms and formal logic.

There is an ongoing debate on the extent to which the writing of programs is an art, a craft or an engineering discipline.[1] In general, good programming is considered to be the measured application of all three, with the goal of producing an efficient and evolvable software solution (the criteria for "efficient" and "evolvable" vary considerably). The discipline differs from many other technical professions in that programmers, in general, do not need to be licensed or pass any standardized (or governmentally regulated) certification tests in order to call themselves "programmers" or even "software engineers." Because the discipline covers many areas, which may or may not include critical applications, it is debatable whether licensing is required for the profession as a whole. In most cases, the discipline is self-governed by the entities which require the programming, and sometimes very strict environments are defined (e.g. United States Air Force use of AdaCore and security clearance). However, representing oneself as a "Professional Software Engineer" without a license from an accredited institution is illegal in many parts of the world.

Within software engineering, programming (the implementation) is regarded as one phase in a software development process.

Modern programming

SEO Web Content Development

SEO Web Content Development is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on web sites. Web site content may consist of prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies or other digital assets that could be distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser.

SEO Web Content developers may also be search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, or Internet marketing professionals. This is because content is called 'king'. High quality, unique content is what search engines are looking for and SEO content development specialists therefore have a very important role to play in the search engine optimization process. One issue currently plaguing the world of SEO web content development is keyword-stuffed content which are prepared solely for the purpose of manipulating a search engine. This is giving a bad name to genuine web content writing professionals. The effect is writing content designed to appeal to machines (algorithms) rather than people or community. Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to Article Directories to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most Article Directories allow visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are maintained.

When the World Wide Web began, web developers either generated content themselves, or took existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup language (HTML). In time, the field of web site development came to encompass many technologies, so it became difficult for web site developers to maintain so many different skills. SEO Content development is a specialized web site developers who have content generation skills such as graphic design, multimedia development, professional writing, and documentation. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites without using information technology skills such as script language programming and database programming.

Cons and Pros of Online Classes

There's an increasing number of paid and free online classes you can take to learn a new trade, brush up on your calculus skills, and even learn a language, but are online classes the best way to go? For some, it takes the edge off of the skyrocketing tuition costs in the US (since you can sometimes find online classes at a lower price). While for others, it's a great idea in theory but requires huge amounts of self-discipline to complete. Here, we'll take a look at the pros and cons of online learning verses the traditional college education. Which is right for you?

Cons

   1. Your living room may not be the best place to learn. Though learning at your own pace and time can seem like the optimal situation, there's something to be said for getting out of your house and into a classroom, away from distractions like the Internet, TV, and, of course, your bed.

   2. In fact, you may just never leave your room. Moving around on campus = forced interaction = a better social situation. Plus, exercise!

   3. You might miss out on meeting awesome new people. While online classes allow you to interact with others through your computer, you'll miss that oh-so-important face time with your peers.

   4. Speaking of face time, you won't get as much of it with your professor, either. All colleges are different, but many feature at least some smaller classes where your absence or lack of participation is noticed quickly by the professor. This may encourage you to work harder, show up completely prepared for class, and in-class participation.

Pros

   1. It's applicable to the real world and the pace of business. More workers are telecommuting full-time and learning in an online environment requires the same self-discipline as working solo from home.

   2. You can learn from anywhere. You don't have to be at school to go to school, which would be exceptionally helpful during busy holiday travel seasons or any other time a last-minute trip to mom and dad's is necessary.

   3. It could lower costs for students and institutions. Online classes may translate to lots of online reading material, eliminating the need for the pricey trip to the campus bookstore (and the sore arms that go along with carrying a semester's worth of books).

   4. It could encourage more interaction. It seems counterintuitive, but an online forum can give shier students a chance to be heard, allow for easier discussion of potentially controversial subjects, and make it easier and more efficient for a student to approach a professor. Goodbye, crazy lines during office hours.

   5. A student's program can be tailored to individual needs. If you're not a morning person, a 9 a.m. Online Classes could be torture. If you have access to an online lecture 24/7, you can tune in when your brain is fully awake, meaning better performance and retention.

Computer Course Training Videos

Many Advantage Online Courses Software Training Videos at Online

Computer Course Training Videos offer many advantages, and some tips as compared to more traditional classroom approach, but you should carefully consider your options before jumping into online classes courses. There are costs associated with almost all Online Courses, but they are usually little more than the cost of college and when you consider that there are no travel expenses, and any additional costs of living, you can find online courses on your computer. There are many benefits of online courses related to online learning and training and more time to spend to wonder whatever. The only time you will need to decide for your e-learning is the time you spend studying and any trips to the library or other classes you may need. Some computer online courses to create an online company can train to improve the quality of teachers meet their students’ progress and the new online learning products, which are expected to start this jump.

Competition and technological improvements add up to a credit course for those interested in learning through Computer Course Training Videos. Many E Learning Academy, and online research demand a good knowledge of the Internet and fill out the online course, you’re already many steps closer to the end. You’ll have outstanding knowledge in the field of research the Internet and software training, always able to find information that is useful for a career. There are several classes that you should consider when deciding on the option for Internet E Learning Courses or more traditional classroom. You will need almost too advanced computer training courses to the Internet.

Fortunately, computer courses are in demand in recent years, so you can get a chance to study online courses for your future. If you consider the use of Internet E-books or buying books online, then you can reduce this price even more. Do not forget that you need E Learning Tools; E learning software, online learning of speech products and an Internet connection, but again the price of these has dropped dramatically. New educational program of Online courses are promising, even below the cost of courses, although they still do not have experience. To see the tour computing the nearest training academy, you are not so much knowledge of computers or the Internet to find the nearest training Academy in the first round, and it can transform your future. Just click on the web site and search on Internet Online Learning and Training in the use of the software you’ll need to learn online software.

Search online internet all this information at your fingertips. E Learning Academy can help all people of all courses, as growth rates, they want there is better knowledge or to advance in a career they already have. If you are working parents or unemployed bachelor, there are courses available to complete through online courses.

IT Job Careers

It is easier to get a job that is not advertised than one that is advertised..!

While this comment probably sounds absurd, here are 3 reasons why it’s absolutely true:

1. If a job is promoted to the public, you are certainly not the only person who can see it or apply. When a job is advertised, an organization can receive hundreds of applications within a matter of hours. Some top employers even receive thousands of unsolicited resumes every week. Good luck standing out in a pile of 13,279 resumes. On a side-note, the best way to stand out in a stack of resumes is not to use keywords or a high-tech software program to beat a computer system’s screening process. The best way to stand out in a stack of resumes is to never end up in the stack in the first place.

2. Many publicly advertised jobs are not currently available. When you see an advertised job (regardless of where/how it is being promoted), it is often too late because the job was already filled. There is no fool-proof way to know, although the longer it has been posted, the less likely it is still vacant. In some cases, employers just want to see what is out there, and they aren’t 100% committed to or even that serious about hiring someone. Have you ever given online dating a try just to “see what’s out there?” Employers engage in non-committal scoping, too.


3. Most job openings are never publicly advertised anyway. Employers will only promote a job opening to the public as a total last-ditch effort. Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring person for a second. Would you rather hire someone you found on Craig’s List or someone you trust from your existing network? It’s a no-brainer. When I worked in the NBA, HR for our company would send a memo to the entire staff whenever a position became available. We could then talk to our supervisors about applying if we wanted to change jobs within the company, or we could refer people we knew. Jobs were frequently filled without needing to look outside the organization. Some companies even compensate their employees for helping them identify talent “behind-the-scenes.” My college roommate once played in a basketball league with a guy who tried to convince him to work for his company. We later learned that the person would have gotten a $2,500 bonus if my friend had been hired through the employee’s referral.


What’s the takeaway here for job-seekers?

Stop looking for jobs, and start looking for people! When you approach the right people the right way, everything else will take care of itself…