Each CareerKit contains numerous videos that present an exciting way to learn about careers while practicing listening comprehension, vocabulary and note-taking skills. Students find the videos engaging and accessible and enjoy seeing what the day-to-day reality of life at work looks like in various career settings. Video activities can be found in Units 3 or 4 of all CareerKits.

There are many sources of career videos. The largest and most complicated is YouTube. Thousands of career videos can be found on YouTube, but there are not all ideal for showing in class. We combed through hundreds of videos to find the most useful ones. Our criteria for video selection included:

• Must be US-based.
• Must talk about required on-the-job tasks.
• Ideally filmed on location at the workplace, so viewers see the personnel, equipment and customers, as well as hearing about the job from the narrator.
• Must talk about what the worker likes about their job, and what is challenging about it.
• Many videos talk about the career trajectory, including previous jobs and training that led to the worker entering their current job, or what an employer looks for in new hires.
• Between 1:30 and 7 minutes in length.
• Must be professional in tone and language, and have good production quality, including good sound.

The video below is a sample of a typical video included in the CareerKits.

Videos can be challenging to work with in class. A lot of information can be packed into a short video, and it can go by quickly. To help students digest videos, there are several ways to scaffold them:

1. Repetition – Always have students watch and listen to it more than once. You can focus on a particular listening task with each round of viewing. For example, with the first viewing you might ask, What is the job? What kind of work does the person do at their job? On a subsequent round, you might ask, What do they like and dislike about their job and why? Then maybe, What led the narrator to this job?
2. Chunk it – You can break the video into one-minute segments, and assign tasks that relate to each segment, asking questions about the information presented in that one segment.
3. Mute it – If the video has good visuals, you can do one round of viewing without sound, asking students to focus on the visuals, with questions such as, Where do you think this is filmed? What do people appear to be doing? What kind of business do you think this is?

After watching the video, or while watching it, students can write answers to questions about the videos, activating their knowledge of the career and practicing writing skills. The handout below, included in every CareerKit video activity is general enough to apply to most career videos.

In addition to YouTube, other good sources of career videos include:

Career OneStop Videos – These videos are arranged by Career Cluster. Each video is approximate 1:30 long. There are career videos in Spanish and videos about entire industries as well as specific careers.

PBS Career Connections– These are 3-7 minute videos, arranged in alphabetical order.

Career Crosswalks in the Adirondacks – These videos, produced by the Mountain Lake PBS station, look at careers based in the Adirondacks. They are organized by career clusters, with several videos in each cluster.

DrKit is a YouTube channel with hundreds of short videos on careers.

Which career videos have your students especially connected to? Write your comment in the box below.