Connecting Students with Technology Education

1. Connecting Students with Technology Education Ruth AkersITEEA 2010 Sollers Point Technical High SchoolBaltimore County Public Schoolsrakers@bcps.org

2. Objective:* Provide background of research related to providing interest to students in technology education.* Provide strategies for instructors to use that will help females and low performing students connect with their Technology Education curriculum.

3. Outline • Overview: Students need 21st century skills to be successful • Females and lower performing students do not connect with topics found in many technology education curriculum • Specific strategies and activities that can spark interest in females and lower achieving students • Audience participation: Share successful strategies that have worked. • References • Questions

4. Students need 21st Century Skills These skills include, teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving and good communication. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

5. Students need 21st Century Skills Recommendations include: • Instructional programs be updated • Teacher training must change • Assessments need to be changed to reflect the expected tasks and learning. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

6. Students need 21st Century Skills • Bob Lenz states, “Students must also be able to apply what they've learned and articulate their viewpoints.” (Eutopia Magazine) • Past literature reminds us that the United States needs trained engineers, technologists and technicians to be competitive in our global economy. (McCarthy 2009)

7. Low performing students • “In many cases, students have been “written off” and allowed to wander through school with little or no direction, minimal effort and few expectations.” (Gene Bottoms) • He also recommends increasing raising the academic core classes that are required. • That means increasing rigor.

8. Strategies for Low Performing Students • Require computer proficiency • Expect students to use computers and software to complete assignments • “A career/technical concentration raises student achievement when it is aimed at advancing students’ technical literacy and knowledge by having them read and interpret technical materials and draw upon their mathematics, scientific and technical knowledge and skills to complete challenging assignments” (Gene Bottoms)

9. Boy & Wind Energy McCarthy Strategies • Positive male role models • Making your classroom an inviting place to learn. • How you interact with students • Look for alternative ways to test projects (“What can be done to improve our understanding and our output?”) • Check your states technology education framework and try to adapt or incorporate ideas that allow students to choose a problem • “Market” your program. Ray McCarthy The Technology Teacher October 2009

11. Strategies and Activities to Spark Interest (How can you get female and low performing students interested in your program when most programs are driven by a curriculum and standards.) • The answer is to make it fun and relevant. • “Additionally, curriculum materials need to connect in meaningful ways with students' prior experiences and the world in which they live” (Katherine Weber and Rodney Custer) The Nerd Girls

12. The Nerd Girls Websitehttp://nerdgirls.com/

13. Strategies and Activities that can Spark Interest • Find activities that all students can relate to. • Females prefer the design phase of projects, communications projects. • Males prefer the making stages of projects, transportation vehicles. • Females are interested in the social aspect of a problem (environmental issues and helping others). • Males are interested in “how things work”.

14. Female (HS and MS) Preferred Activities (Weber and Custer ) • Use a software-editing program to edit a music video • Using a computer software program, design a CD cover. • Design a model of an amusement park. • Design a school mascot image to print on t-shirts. • Design a "theme" restaurant in an existing building. • Using computers to communicate • Cloning • How video materials are developed to communicate a message • Robotics • Characteristics of design

15. Male (HS and MS) Preferred Activities(Weber and Custer ) • Build a rocket. • Construct an electric vehicle that moves on a magnetic track. • Perform simple car maintenance tasks on a car engine. • Program a robotic arm. • Design a model airplane that will glide the greatest distance. • Robotics • Using computers to communicate • Cloning. • How to repair products • How video materials are developed to communicate a message

16. Interest Levels for Instructional Approaches to Lessons (Weber & Custer)

17. Interest Levels for Instructional Approaches to Lessons (Weber & Custer)

18. Friendly Tech Ed? • Let students choose their project or approach • “I could cram many neat design briefs into 45 days, but instead my students are encouraged to choose problems (see page 20) to solve that include engineering principles, research, technical drawing, and writing while using tools and materials to test their hypotheses. None of our challenges are destructive in nature. Competition is friendly and not required. My students try to improve their products, not to best one another but to better understand and improve their final solution.” (Ray McCarthy) • Try to give choices within the curriculum projects you are required to do.

19. More Strategies • Get your guidance or career counselors on board. • Start a technology education club that allows high school students to mentor middle school students. • Create presentation days during which the high school students show elementary and middle school students how technology connects to their everyday world. • Hold a technology education open house at the high • Get your students, female and male, into the local newspapers. • Encourage your students to come up with even better ideas. Whatever a student creates, he or she will support. • Make reading “fun”.

21. Activity Examples Home Safety Plan (service learning project) FLIP camera (instead of ppt.) Hemodialysis Project Rapid Response Vehicle Portable Bridge for Use in an emergency STEM Fair Secure Emergency Response System

22. Audience Participation Share successful strategies.

23. Parting Thought "Students are in great position to solve some problems because they are untainted by the knowledge of what can't be done," said Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect." Questions after the conference? Ruth Akers rakers@bcps.org

24. References: • The Partnership for 21st Century Skillshttp://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php?Itemid=183&id=195&option=com_content&task=view • 21st Century Skills: The Challenges AheadAndrew J. Rotherham and Daniel Willinghamhttp://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/21st_Century_Skills@_The_Challenges_Ahead.aspx • Bob Lenz of Eutopia Magazinehttp://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-achievement-motivation • Raising achievement of low-performing students, Gene Bottomshttp://www.earlycolleges.org/Downloads/RaisingAchievementBottoms.pdf • JTE Weber & Custer, Gender-based Preferences toward Technology Education Content, Activities, and Instructional Methods,http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v16n2/weber.html • The Technology Teacher October 2009 Vol. 69 Number 2; McCarthy, Beyond Smash and Crash: Gender-Friendly Tech Ed (members only online ; http://www.iteaconnect.org/Publications/TTT/oct09.pdf ) • Engineer Your Life Webinar October 22, 2009 (additional resources provided athttp://www.engineeryourlife.org/ )