Welcome to the ATE Central Connection! Published the first Monday of each month, the ATE Central Connection is meant to disseminate information to and about ATE centers and projects, providing you with up-to-date ATE news, events, reminders, as well as highlighting new centers, projects, and resources. In addition, we will also highlight an educational topic with complementary resources found within ATE Central to help illustrate how ATE resources can be used in the classroom.
We want the ATE Central Connection to be a valuable tool; please e-mail [email protected] with any suggestions about how to make the ATE Central Connection more useful for you or to suggest any information you would like to see in an upcoming issue.
For more events please visit the ATE Central Events page or if you have any upcoming events that you would like posted on ATE Central or in the ATE Central Connection please send them to [email protected]
HI-TEC is a national conference on advanced technical education where technical educators, counselors, industry professionals, and technicians can update their knowledge and skills. Charged with Educating America's Technical Workforce, the event focuses on the preparation needed by the existing and future workforce for companies in the high-tech sectors that drive our nation's economy. HI-TEC will uniquely expolore the convergence of scientific disciplines and technologies including: Advanced Manufacturing; Aerospace; Agricultural, Environmental, and Energy; Biomanufacturing, Biotechnology, and Engineering; Geospatial; Information, Communications, and Security; Learning and Evaluation; Micro- and Nanotechnologies; and Optics and Photonics. HI-TEC is supported by the National Science Foundation and contributions from corporate and industry partners. HI-TEC will consist of one and a half days of pre-conference workshops and two days of conference sessions and keynote speakers.
Here is a small sample of the valuable resources in ATE Central that focus on Optics:
From NetWorks:
Making an Impact with Light is a comprehensive, ready-to-use collection of six classroom modules on optics. The kit comes packaged with a How to Manual and everything you need to use with 20 to 30 students for all six modules. All materials are reusable. The manual is full of activities and teaching ideas. In addition, a companion resource, Scope It Out! An Optics Activity and Resource Notebook, is available to all program leaders. Designed for educators, optics professionals, and others who want to expand the optics they teach, the resource notebook also contains a host of resource lists on a wide range of optics topics and optics background materials.
From OP-TEC:
This site is the blog of the National Center for Optics and Photonics Education (OP-TEC). Here, visitors will find important updates in photonic technician education, industry, OP-TEC project partners, and events. For educators and students in photonics, this is a great resource to stay abreast of what is happening in education and industry.
OP-TEC has developed program planning and text/laboratory materials to support education and training for future and current photonics technicians. Classroom materials include Fundamentals of Light and Lasers, Elements of Photonics, Modules in Photonics Enabled Technologies, Laser Electro-Optics Technology (LEOT) series, and Mathematics for Photonics Education. Program planning guides, which are "manuals for community and technical college planner to enable them to determine whether and how to infuse Photonics education into existing programs, are also available here and include Manufacturing Technology, Biomedical Applications, Homeland Security, Optoelectronics, Telecommunication Technology, and Electronics Engineering Technology. Also available are links to the National Photonics Skill Standards for Technicians and the National Precision Optics Skill Standards for Technicians.
ATE Central, TeachingTechnicians, and ATETV will be presenting at the HI-TEC Conference in Orlando, FL on Thursday, July 29, 11:00 am until noon. If you are attending the conference please stop by the presentation and find out about Online ATE Resources. We will also have a booth in the Tech Showcase — stop by and visit ATE Central at booth #201.
CWIS is open source software, created with NSF funding, that can help your project or center showcase resources online. It's free and very easy to use — click here to check out a few of the sites running CWIS. We'd be happy to provide you with more information about CWIS and give you a quick tour of its features — please e-mail Edward Almasy ([email protected]) to get started!
For information about ATE Central and how your project or center can take part and benefit from ATE Central's portal and services you may want to download the ATE Central Handbook at http://atecentral.net/handbook.