SEMEURBAK

Expeditions career tours can take kids to work virtually

Soledad O’Brien is a broadcast journalist and founder of Starfish Media Group. She is also CEO of the Starfish Foundation, which provides financial assistance and mentoring to help kids go to college. Recently, the Starfish Foundation launched virtual career tours using Google Expeditions, about which O’Brien joins us to talk about today. To become part of the Expeditions Pioneer beta program, sign up via this form. -Ed.

Kids dream about what they want to be when they grow up, but these dreams are often limited—built around the few professional people they know. What if children don’t know a veterinarian, an airplane pilot, a paleontologist, or someone in dozens of other careers? What if they lack access to internships or mentors? Can they ever dream big?

I know from watching my own kids visit me at work, and from the scholars I mentor, that exposure to all kinds of professionals is the key to inspiring young people. When I first found out about Expeditions, I saw its potential for broadening the horizons of the student scholars we help at Starfish Foundation. I envisioned creating virtual reality Expeditions that let kids step into someone’s work day, simply by using phones and Google Cardboard viewers. So that’s what we did.

Soledad OBrien with scholars from the Starfish Foundation.

Working with the Google Expeditions team, we created virtual reality tours that show kids the ins and out of careers they might not ever learn about otherwise. From flying an airplane to testing fossil samples, kids can see with their own eyes exactly what people do in many different scenarios. They can watch Carolyn Brown, director of surgery for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, perform a procedure on a cat. Or join Mark Norell, a paleontology professor with the American Museum of Natural History, as he examines a velociraptor specimen up close. And today, schools participating in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program and Expeditions beta will be able to go on an Expedition of the Google Mountain View campus to see what it’s like to work at Google.

A career Expedition on American Airlines Pilot, Pam Torell. The view is from the cockpit of one of her scheduled flights.

These Expeditions reveal what professionals like about their jobs, what they studied in school, and how they apply their knowledge to their work. Regular field trips are logistically challenging, and they don’t usually focus on careers. But with Expeditions, teachers can share an experience with students right in the classroom. You can’t fit 30 students in the cockpit of a plane, but you can get a virtual reality tour of one using Expeditions. And today, on “Take Your Kids to Work Day,” there’s no better time to get creative about exposing students to different types of jobs and workplace environments.

Children won’t know what jobs are possible if they don’t know the careers exist. Rather than just telling them, teachers can actually show them. With these career Expeditions, students can travel outside the classroom walls and be exposed to more ideas, places and opportunities than ever before.

Posted by Soledad O’Brien


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphZlhh3YQCDB3U7Nks-dlTlsfTjWUI1JMs-4wLeDz76LRUVQMkNfEqTK7ZGiPJTUwM6R6mMedxAdTnnl3VMaOyAdVcOuE44gkukGwU7dYDHMw28IWkmbTcR_2PvRRgiT07RmSb92s3fg/s1600/EDU-Expeditions-b-13.png Soledad O’Brien

Available link for download

Ways Managers Can Make Manufacturing More Efficient

Make a Better Product Through Better Business Practices

www.TekoaERP.com

By Anders Nostdahl

As a manager in today’s business world, the constant wrestling with business processes is an event that will never end. The best way for a manager to deal with it is by making the opponent in this wrestling match smaller. What I am trying to say is that by making your business processes more efficient and manageable; a manager will be able to deal with unexpected events more easily and swiftly. For those who do not know, a business process is a collection of related tasks that produce a specific service or product for a particular customer or customers. For an accounting class last year, we took a field trip to a company called HOTSTART, which specialize in the development and implementation of engine heating systems. A manager there walked us through their manufacturing center and showed us what problems they faced, and how they became more efficient. Below are three ways a manager can squeeze out every last drop of efficiency out of a manufacturing line.

PERSONALLY PARTICIPATING

The manager at HOTSTART told us that when he first arrived he knew nothing about manufacturing engine heaters. What gave him the competitive edge was actually going through the manufacturing line personally and learning all the positive and negative aspects of how they were putting together their project. The raw and personal information that he learned from applying himself to the task was invaluable to him and his accounting team. 

LEAN ACCOUNTING TEAM

HOTSTART’s accounting division has adopted a term for decreasing bottlenecks around their plant. The term lean accounting refers to making changes in a business process that allows its workers to become more efficient. From there, they created a lean accounting team. They go around and analyze each section of the manufacturing process and find the most efficient way to do that part of the line. For example, the manufacturing line was occurring to many costs and was falling behind in their orders. The employees were getting physically sore and were losing efficiency during the building of their products. During some parts of manufacturing process employees are either sitting or standing. The lean accounting team used time management as well as employee comfort rating that have made the line that much more efficient.

DON’T BE AFRAID

The manager that was giving the tour stressed that trying new things was vital to improving bottlenecks and making his manufacturing line more efficient. At first he was not so eager to implement drastic changes to the line, in fear of trying something and it failing and costing more money. He and his lean accounting team have tried and failed many times experimenting with new and more efficient means of performing tasks on their lines. But when they finally an adjustment, it more than covers the expenses that his lean accounting team end up spending. For example, the task of attaching the protective plastic on their big engine heaters was costing them time and money. After many weeks of trying new ideas and failing they found a solution. They created a suspension machine that carried all the necessary tools and which suspended an employee over the engine to attach the protective plastic onto the heater. This new more efficient way saved them so much more money in the long term and covered the lean accounting teams costs all while doubling their efficiency rating. 

Mr. Nostdahl is a business student at Whitworth University

Available link for download