A Look at Our Kids During the Summer

Summer Jobs for Youth

This is a very interesting digital story from Education Week summarizing the summer job trends of our youth in America.

Click on the link above to view the interactive graph

Three traits were chosen from Jason Ohler’s rubric to use in order to critique this story (each worth 10 points):

1.       Project Planning

2.       Economy

3.       Presentation and Performance

1. Project Planning- Is there evidence of a plan?

Yes, I believe there was evidence of a plan because this infographic was not created overnight.  You can tell that the creator took the time to gather data from the past 50 or so years and present it in an interactive graph. 

Score: 10

2.  Economy- was the information presented through the story sifted and prioritized?

I do not believe there is a lot of unnecessary information in this infographic.  It is fairly straight forward and easy to follow.  It is prioritized because you can filter by age and gender or view all data for the age group.  There are different trends that can be analyzed or studied further if so desired.

Score: 10 

3.  Presentation and Performance- How effective was the actual presentation?

I think this is a very effective presentation of this data.  It is more than just graphs.  You can filter the graphs and see only the information you choose; for example, you could select females in the information industry to better view the trend line.  You can also filter the second graph and hover over the third to get more information.  The only thing I think is missing is any information on how many of these jobs are internships, if any.  Summer is a big time for kids to intern to get experience so that information would be helpful.

Score: 9

Overall: 29

Other comments:

There are a lot of interesting things to note while looking at these graphs.  First, I was surprised to see that the information jobs trend line hasn’t grown much over the last 15 years (I guess you have to keep in mind that these are just summer jobs).  I also found it interesting that Denver is one of the highest cities over the past 10 years for employment/population rations for major cities.  It’s also a little frightening that the percentage has gone down in recent years, interpret how you see fit...