Welcome to the CTAE Middle School Engineering and Technology Pathways

 

Overview of the Middle School Pathway

The Engineering Pathway teaches students to use their imagination and analytic skills to invent, design, and build technology that matters. Many times engineering is a team sport, meaning that people work together to solve problems. By dreaming up creative and practical solutions, engineers are changing the world all the time.

 

The purpose of Technology Education is to develop a technological literacy as part of all students' fundamental education through an activity-based study of past, present, and future technological systems and their resources, processes, and impact on society. Technology Education utilizes computer and educational technology in the delivery of content related to systems of communication, energy/power-transportation, production, and bio-related technologies.

 

In these classes I will be employing a blended learning, student-centered, traditional, computer-based and interactive educational style called Social Constructionism.

 

According to William Rice (2011),

"This style of learning is interactive. The social constructionist philosophy believes that people learn best when they interact with the learning material, construct new material for others, and interact with other students about the material. The difference between a traditional class and a class following the social constructionist philosophy is the difference between a lecture and a discussion." 

Each student will also work at their own pace to master the CTAE GPS standards prescribed by the State of Georgia for the Middle School 
"Engineering Pathway".

Relevance
An important challenge in today's educational system is how to relate to students in such a way as to encourage them to learn.    One thing that teachers hear regularly from students is 

 

     . This is boring!
     . What does this class have to do with my life?
     . Will I ever really use this?

 

According to Baker, "The students of today are different from the students of one hundred and fifty years ago. 1    We are no longer an Agrarian Society that needs to have their students go home for three months in the summer to harvest their family's crops. The knowledge that is forgotten over that three month period is not necessary. The constant in today's education system is time, while learning is the variable. We need to change that around so that learning is the constant and time becomes the variable (Baker, 2011)."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Future Classroom
The future classroom will use "Virtual Reality" and be made up of round tables seating four students per table. Each table will have a small, four-sided pedestal in the center to encompass any wires or cables needed to connect the PCs and peripheral devices. One flat screen monitor will be located in front of each student on each side of the four-sided pedestal. The teacher's workstation will be in the back of the room and will be networked with each computer, via the LMS, enabling individual monitoring of student work and activities. It will also be able to alert the teacher when students are not working or on task.

 

While the students are working on their activities, the non-mastered areas, for each individual student, is strengthened by the computer-based LMS's activity choices. Areas that the students have mastered are reviewed, while non-mastered areas are covered more extensively by the LMS. This website will be the main location for information and directions to your class. This following image is a virtual rendering of what I envision the classroom of the future to look like! For a little bit of inspiration, and a reality assurance, check out this site, Click Here.