Parents' Guide to Careergirls.org

This informational site offers written career descriptions that include salary, skill requirements, and other job elements. Working professionals also briefly explain their educational and career background and address a number of other topics on Careergirls.org, such as goals, overcoming obstacles, and their typical day at work in video interviews. The career content is listed by specific role (actor, audiologist, etc.) and broadly by field, which can help girls who aren't sure exactly what position they'd be interested in narrow down their options. They can also search for information using career-related keywords, and enter sign language, Portuguese, or another language to see if any videos are available in it.

Girls may not make it through all the videos for each professional -- an interview with one producer, for example, yielded 21 -- but generally, they provide an interesting perspective and uplifting advice. The site has done an admirable job of including materials girls can print and use to further explore their interests and career options; an interactive quiz also offers some insight. But a number of the life skill-based empowerment lessons and other items are audio recordings instead of videos, which isn't the most dynamic way to present the information. Splicing together clips from other videos on the site or adding some sort of visual component would make them a more compelling learning tool. Some sections seem a little sparse -- only three careers, for instance, are listed under the Career Clusters energy heading, compared to more than 30 careers in the STEM section, and kids won't find corresponding role model videos for each career that's mentioned. But Careergirls says it adds content weekly, so it's likely more items will be available in those and other sections soon, and there's plenty of information available now to get girls started.