My Top 5 Business Projects

Congratulations – you have finally reached the end. In this post, I will be sharing my top 5 business assignments and what I learned from them. This will act as a sample for you when you enter the grade 9 business course and copy and paste my work. No just kidding, teachers are smart so maybe don’t do that but this will give you an idea of what’s to come and what is expected.

5. My Resume

Click to check out my resume. >Download

Out of all of Microsoft Word, I chose my resume creation because it truly helped me gain the skill set I need to create a good resume. With part-time jobs right around the corner and full-time ones down the road, resume creation is something you should master before applying to jobs. The format helped me reflect on my past work and type it down in an organized fashion. Learning how to make resumes now will save you the hassle in the future. If I want to apply to jobs, I just need to tweak a few things, possibly add new accomplishments and volunteer experiences and I’ll be good to go. This assignment wasn’t a one time thing, but a constant practice of building your future.

4. Event Poster

This poster was one of my favourites and I learned how to place pictures into shapes, and stuff all the information for an event on one page. It was a little tricky because I felt like there was no space but zooming in and working on it that way like you would in Photoshop helped a lot. Poster making is a skill we can all use. It could be for sports, school, a garage sale and anything you could think of. Learning to experiment with the right colours (I picked a contrast of turquoise, coral and white) and the right sizes will help grab your audience in the right way. Besides, having crickets show up to your sale event is no fun so marketing through posters and social media is the way to go.

3. Business Card

The business card project in Photoshop was by far the most frustrating project in the Photoshop unit. But like all frustrating situations, you learn something new. I first made a business card and it turned out a bit fuzzy with a weird slogan and logo. After a bit of tweaking, I was able to layer and crop in order to produce a new logo and a contrasting background. Business cards may not seem like the most important thing to make but if you ever make a company, business cards are crucial to getting customers to come back. Medical jobs have business cards, organization employees have business cards, shops have business cards and many more occupations! I mentioned before in a previous post that I was part of a business program and we created a business card for our mini company too. You never know when you’ll make one of these so make sure you’re prepared by taking the grade 9 business course.

2. Ethics Video

In our Ethics unit, we had questions to choose from regarding social and computing decisions in the digital world. I picked “does technology create just as many problems as it tries to solve?”. My answer was yes and I formatted my opinion as an essay but I decided to make a video on Powtoon because I had the extra time. Powtoon is a video software where you create animations and it was actually my first time using it. It’s a little time-consuming but you end up with great results and a free trial for 3 days! This project made me aware of the dangers of social media and what it can do to you. It’s important to know this information because we are at risk of it too by creating an online presence. It’s crucial to know how many hours is safe to spend and who to trust.

1. Magazine Cover

Finally, our culminating project for the photoshop unit was to create a magazine cover. This was by far my favourite because I was able to use the quick selection tool efficiently and overlap different layers. The glitter at the top was a result of experimenting and added a great visual to this magazine. My cover was based on women empowerment and I really enjoyed educating myself on the different issues out there. Sold In America is also my favourite podcast so that’s a plus. Although you may not want to create a magazine when you’re older, projects like this will help you expand your creativity throughout high school and really help you utilize the AIDA technique to grab people’s attention when advertising. I will definitely keep this project in mind when required to present your information in a creative way.

Those were my 5 business projects and I hope after reading this, you were able to take something away from my experience and apply it to yours. So if you haven’t signed up for grade 9 business yet, do it and I look forward to seeing how you do.

Computer Literacy

Computer literacy is the basic knowledge of computer principles and how computer work. In grade 9 business, you take a lesson on Hardware and Software and then apply it to a worksheet. It’s fairly easy and the rest of this unit covers ergonomics (office safety), ethics and viruses.

In the virus unit, you fill out a worksheet about the different kinds of viruses and I found this very helpful as we can be at risk using our own computers so it’s important to know how to avoid them.

In the ethics unit, you are given 3 questions to choose from regarding your opinion on technology. One question was “does technology create just as many problems as it solves?” and another was “does social media really make you social?” These questions really make you think and you have complete freedom on the way you want to deliver the message. Learning these ethics and researching them helped me be aware of the dangers of social media and the importance of reducing screen time.

In the ergonomics unit, there is a mini lesson on office safety and different injuries that can be present with jobs that include computer work. This unit helped me understand what positions and techniques I can use in my daily life at home, school or work when I’m older to prevent these office injuries. Check out this brochure that I made for this project:

Ergonomics BrochureDownload

I made it using Canva so turns out these design softwares really do help you with school work. *hint*takethebusinesscourse*hint*

Canva

Canva was a side unit that came along with Photoshop to familiarize ourselves with more graphic design programs. Unlike Photoshop, I was actually familiar with Canva as I used it multiple times in the past year. I find Canva easier than photoshop when making posters and brochures and the best part is: they have the templates ready to go for you to use.

I created a brochure for the first time which you can see in my portfolio. It was really easy to use and I familiarized myself with all the templates and tools with this unit. Best of all, we had complete creativity control over what we created.

Canva is important when it comes to business because you can create logos and featured images to go for your online business or web page. Everyone is on technology nowadays so gaining great graphic skills will help you generate traffic to your social media.

Here is an Oakridge event that I used Canva for:

Business Club EventDownload

If you don’t want an online presence, Canva is used for poster making and invitations which is used in our daily lives. Whether it’s a sports event or a fundraiser, knowing how to use this program will definitely help you in the near future.

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editor created by Adobe Inc. The first time I used Photoshop was right here in business and it was hands down one of my favourite units. The first couple assignments were activities to get you familiar with the program and by the end, you would master all the tools to create your own projects.

Like I said, I’ve never used Photoshop before so I learned lots using this program. For example, how to change the colour of something, how to remove blemishes by using the duplicate stamp tool and more. The lesson is super easy and if you ever need any help, the teacher is always there.

Here are a couple things we experimented with in Acitivity #2:

1. Changed the Colour of a Car.

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2. Removed a Red Eye.

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3. Removed Spots

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Now you can photoshop all your Instagram pictures so you end up like Kylie Jenner. No just kidding, don’t photoshop yourself. But in the business world, you may have to tweak up certain products for advertisement by removing the background and enhancing the product. Please don’t go overboard and photoshop your burgers like McDonald’s does but it’s a helpful tip to know.

You can also make book covers, magazine covers and packaging which may come up in the future. For school and home uses, you can make posters raising awareness or promoting a sports team. The possibilities are endless and you learn it right here in the classroom. So if you want to know more or willing to master these photoshop skills, sign up for grade 9 business today.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program similar to Google Slides but with a lot more design and transition options. Unlike Excel, I’m pretty familiar with PowerPoint and used it all the time as a kid. You will be asked multiple times to create presentations throughout high school and learning the basics now will help so much for your next presentation.

PowerPoint has many features like transitions, fonts, picture designs and more. I found many cool transitions such as the slide crumbling or turning into a paper airplane like how cool is that? And there’s WordArt too that makes your font turn 3D. Child self aside, the PowerPoint unit also taught us presentation skills. I used to write little paragraphs and read them off cue cards but I learned that a few bullets and elaborating in your own words is much more effective.

This software can be used for many situations such as a school project, a professional business pitch, a slideshow to highlight your year and more. For now, school projects might be your number one but later on in life you’ll realize there are more situations that need a slideshow. If you become a teacher, slideshows are super important when planning out your courses. Kids can lose their attention span so it is important to learn all the presentation skills and make it attractive through grade 9 business.

Here is an example of our culminating project where we had to pitch a country. I picked my hometown:

Trip Of A LifetimeDownload

Making that presentation taught me 3 things.

1. Props and questions help the audience engage in your presentations
2. You don’t always need cue cards because you should know what you’re talking about
3. SAVE. YOUR. WORK.

I almost dropped the business course at one point because I’d close PowerPoint by accident or it would glitch and there goes ALL my work. It’s seriously the worst so make sure you save your work every five minutes or so to ensure you don’t mentally pass out like me.

Your teacher will leave lots of tips on the course website next year but here are a few that I’ll share here:

• Talk to your audience, not the slides. Don’t just read what’s on the board…we can read that. The slide is a starting point and visual only.
• Keep slides SIMPLE! Too much diverts audience away from content.
• Use a conclusion slide to: summarize the main points of your presentation and/or suggest future avenues of research.

Overall, the PowerPoint unit helped enhance my presentation skills and create a professional looking presentation through Microsoft. Presentations will be required along the way and doing it now in Grade 9 Business will help pave the way for you too.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet software created by Microsoft. Google has something like Google Sheets so you may be familiar with that. Here’s the thing though, I’m terrible at Excel. Word? Sure. Design? Yes. But spreadsheets? Yikes. I thought it was what only bankers and teachers used for finance and report cards. Surely I wouldn’t need it at any point in my life, right?

Truth is, Excel is a super useful tool. You can create calendars and calculate your allowance. It helps you keep track of time and dates and money. Plus, it’s all saved into your computer to share with others. I went from being completely unfamiliar with it to a total bank pro. Okay, maybe not pro but it’s really beneficial. You can make charts, calendars and budget calculations.

I’m currently in a business program outside of school (what a nerd, I know) but Excel is used a lot in tracking our attendance and finance, which is really important for businesses. You can use it in science for calculating data in labs and math for creating graphs and formulas. You can use it at home to calculate your budget. I celebrate Eid so I need to make sure I organize my money and not spend all of it on Urban Planet (totally not obsessed with that store).

You can plug in formulas to predict future trends and you can create If Then statements that answer automatically. For example, I can plug in the formula “=IF(*insert cell number*>25, “YES”, “NO”)” and if I insert anything in that cell under 25, it would say no. It’s like training your own robot! Next thing you know these formulas will make me ice cream and we’ll be good to go. Below I’ll have my sample of our If Then statement project – it was a 6 part project and these samples got full marks so I hope it helps you get the idea.

Gas Station CalculationsDownload

Riddle QuizDownload

I learned a lot from this course and I’m sure you will too. It may seem a little boring at first but like I said earlier, it’s open for creativity as well. Just look how cute my riddle pictures were in that project above. Fine, maybe they’re not so cute but Excel will help you so much I promise. Besides, who wants to do their own graphs and calculations when a program can do it for you? It’s called Grade 9 Business but it’s more like a life hacks course so make sure you sign up today.

that’s totally juice – don’t sue me

Microsoft Word

The first unit we were assigned was exploring Microsoft Word. Microsoft is a word processor application commonly used to publish essays, documents and paperwork. But it can also be used for cards and brochures with many templates to offer.

A misconception I had about Microsoft Word is that it was only to type up essays and boring material but when we started approaching different assignments, I learned you can customize Word in many ways. There are lots of fonts and layouts to play around with and it is very easy to navigate.

Word is very important in the business world because documents and letters are being exchanged all the time. Not to mention, Microsoft Word has many templates for Resumes and Cover Letters which will be very handy in a few years down the road. It can also help with school work when writing essays, speeches, newspaper articles and more. I never thought I’d have to use Word at home but a while back, I was asked to write a reference letter for someone and Microsoft was the best option for that because the letter would save directly into my files waiting to be emailed.

I learned that you can even create menus with frames and shape designs. Here was our Word culminating project that I learned the most from:

Click To View >Download

The link above is completely safe – I just couldn’t upload it as a PDF. This project was a little harder than the rest because it took me a while to learn how to organize the columns and images. It was worth it though because now I can create menus and newspaper articles if I ever need to in the future.

Word was a great program and working with their tools made it easier to create many types of documents. Most business documents use Microsoft so familiarizing yourself with this program for school, home and business is something I strongly recommend.

And that’s about all. Overall, the instructions were super easy to follow and our teacher gave us total freedom for creativity. Microsoft was an easy and helpful program to navigate and in a few months, you’ll feel the same too.

Welcome To Grade 9 Business (BTT 1O1-01)

Are you hesitant picking between electives for your freshman year? Or just trying to learn a little about the grade 9 business course before signing up? I was in the exact same position as you this time last year but after a whole semester of experience, I assure you that grade 9 business helped me expand my technological and digital marketing skills that will benefit me for years to come. We live in a century where technology is accessed by half of the world’s population and it is important to learn how to navigate and take advantage of these great tools when it comes to using them at school and outside of school.

After reading this website, you will know what to expect when entering the course and if it interests you, go for it. This course is perfect for you if you:

• Want to expand your digital marketing and organization skills
• Love graphic designing or want to expand your skills in the field
• Looking to improve your presentation design skills
• Wanting to explore more tools in Microsoft applications (word, excel..etc)
• Like to spend time on a computer

If you are a hands on person with no interest in online programs and design, I would not recommend this course. But keep in mind that it will help you in your other classes. Plus, if you know how to follow instructions, this course will be a piece of cake.

Still not convinced? Here is why Idecided to join Grade 9 Business.

• I already have a personal blog so expanding my skills in photoshop and canva came in very handy
• I wanted to learn how to use photoshop so I can photoshop myself with all my turkish husbands..erm, I mean celebrities
• I haven’t used Microsoft applications in so long because I used Google for a long time so I wanted to see what tools Microsoft had to offer
• I had no idea how to use Excel and learning it in class would be super helpful
• I wanted to learn new digital marketing skills because social media is the most common way to generate traffic in our generation

The best thing is: all the reasons I joined for were fulfilled throughout the course and we got to design all sorts of cool projects such as magazine covers and menus (perfect when I need to design a menu for my future turkish chef).

I hope this was enough to convince you from my experience but take a look around the website to see what we did and some samples from my work to really put the nail on the head before you join this course.

So what are you waiting for?

Read away and join BTT 1O1-01!