Advanced Technological Education · February 2013

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 info@atecentral.net 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.

Upcoming Events

October 1 – May 15	Fundamentals of Light and Lasers	Online
January 28 – April 5	WomenTech Educators Online Training Fellowship	Online
February 1 – July 31	iGETT - Remote Sensing	Varies
February 8	NetWorks Webinar: Technology Program Review & Recommendations - Evaluating Programs	Online
February 15	NetWorks Webinar: Technology Program Review & Recommendations - Surviving Program Review	Online
February 22	NACK Webinar - Nanotechnology Demos and Simulations	Online
March 8	NetWorks Webinar: New Technologies in Renewable Energies	Online
March 9	1-Day Introductory POGIL Workshop at Linfield College	McMinnville, OR
March 10–13	Innovations 2013	Dallas, TX
March 15–16	VHDL and FPGAs: Beginner Course	Hudson Valley, NY
March 20	EvaluATE Webinar: From Valuing to Visualization: Data Interpretation and Reporting	Online
March 22	NACK Webinar - Trends in Nano: Program Development	Online
April 11–13	Instructional Strategies for Introductory Physics (ISIP) Workshop	Appleton, WI
April 12	NetWorks Webinar: Developmental Ed in STEM: Student Perspectives	Online
April 15–17	CalGIS: 19th Annual California GIS Conference	Long Beach, CA
April 15–18	National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Professional Development Institute	Arlington, VA
April 19	NetWorks Webinar: Developmental Ed in STEM: Promising Practices	Online
April 20–23	93rd AACC Annual Convention	San Francisco
April 26	NACK Webinar - Successful Models for Nano Outreach	Online
April 29 – May 3	SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing 2013	Online

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 info@atecentral.net.

To add a continuously-updated list of ATE and STEM education events to your web site, use the ATE Event Widget.

Featured Project

Access Tech Careers: Improving Access to Technological Education Programs and Careers for Community College Students With Learning Disabilities

http://accesstechcareers.landmark.edu/

The goal of this project is to increase the number of students with learning disabilities who pursue and graduate from technological education programs and either continue their academic pursuit of four-year technological degrees, or gain employment as successful technology workforce employees. Landmark College, a two-year college for students with learning disabilities and attention disorders, conducted a series of needs assessments of three community college technology programs and regional technology employers to develop a professional development program, based on best practices. The professional development materials cover a number of areas of struggle for students in technology-related courses, including mathematics and science instruction, mastering complex vocabulary, study skills, and metacognitive strategies to help students assess their own understanding. These materials are designed to be useful guides to instructors, students, employers, and those wishing to know more about assistive technology resources. All are available through the Access Tech Careers website.

Resources on Best Practices for Improving Access for Students with Disabilities

From Access Tech Careers:

Guide to Creating Rubrics

http://accesstechcareers.landmark.edu/files/2011/08/ATE-rubrics-guide.pdf

This document was developed by Access Tech Careers to support successful course completion for students with learning disabilities. It provides a summary of some research based recommendations on effective rubric construction guidelines.

From MATEC NetWorks:

Access eLearning

http://www.accesselearning.net/

This tutorial is comprised of 10 modules that offer information, instructional techniques, and practice labs on how to make the most common needs in distance education accessible for individuals with disabilities, and enhance the usability of online materials for all students. The modules cover topics such as planning for accessibility in distance education, and making video, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Word, PDF and many other documents accessible for students with disabilities.

From ICT Center:

Universal Design/Accessibility

http://www.ictcenter.org/resources/universal_design.html

The Information and Communications Technologies Center (ICT) presents this collection of links to a number of online tutorials on the topic of universal design and accessibility. The links fall under the categories of technology and internet access, employment resources for people with disabilities, advocacy and services for people with disabilities, government sites and legislative documents and publications.

Social Media Tip of the Month

Networking with Newsletters

Moveable Type Once you've established your presence as a project or center, you will undoubtedly have information you wish to communicate to educational and industry partners, stakeholders, and the general public. One way to accomplish this is by publishing a newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to reach a broad audience of people who might be interested in the work you are doing. They enhance your visibility, remind your partners of what you're working on, and can be passed on for wide reaching impact. If you're considering starting a newsletter, we have some tips to make the process pain-free and rewarding:

Decide why you're starting a newsletter and what will go in it. Will you publish interviews with college or university instructors? Success stories from program graduates? News about what you have developed with your project or center grant?
Decide how frequently you'd like to publish your newsletter, and who your intended audience is. For many projects and centers, a quarterly or biannual newsletter will be frequent enough to cover major developments without costing too much time.
While content is king, it doesn't hurt to design an easy-to-read email to send out to your readers. Free or inexpensive services like MailChimp make this easy.
Make sure past issues of your newsletter are archived on your website so that new students or partners can find them easily.

If you already send out a newsletter, please let us know! We are planning to add newsletters to the ATE Social Media Guide, and would love to give yours some more visibility. Feel free to email us with the link or any questions at info@atecentral.net.

Community Connection

Webinars: Widening Your Circle Without Leaving Home

Webcam Many ATE projects and centers attend conferences throughout the year to learn about best practices, make new connections, and see what others in their areas are doing. When budgets are tight, however, finding professional development opportunities can be a challenge. Fortunately, a number of ATE projects and centers offer webinars throughout the year. Webinars are free, only require an hour or two to attend, and provide a great opportunity for you to meet others in the ATE community, learn about new teaching techniques, and more.

Check out the ATE Central Events Calendar to find upcoming webinars to attend (there are quite a few in February and March), or consider trying one of these upcoming events:

February 8 — NetWorks: Technology Program Review and Recommendations: Evaluating Programs
In this webinar, participants will discuss questions that help ATE projects and centers manage program evaluation, like: "Are the program objectives appropriate in light of current workplace trends?"
February 15 — WindTechTV: New Video Resources for Wind Technology Programs
This webinar provides an overview of the materials available on the WindTechTV website as well as suggestions about how to integrate these materials into the classroom.
February 22 — NACK: Nanotechnology Demos and Simulations
Participants in this webinar will learn about how to incorporate visual tools to engage students with nanotechnology concepts.

As always, please let us know if you plan to hold a webinar by submitting it to the Events Suggestion page so we can add it to the events calendar and help it receive the attention it deserves.

Did you know?

According to the American Association for Community Colleges, State and local governments reap a 16 percent return on every dollar they invest in community colleges due to the increased earnings of community college graduates.

News & Reminders

Congratulations to CSSIA on their Science Nation Feature!

Last week, the Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA) was featured in NSF's Science Nation. You can watch the short video or read the accompanying transcript online. In the video, CSSIA instructors and students share their experiences, their reasons for pursuing cybersecurity, and in at least one case, their successes. It's a great overview of the program, and an inspiring look into what ATE projects and centers can accomplish.

Collecting Newsletter Links

ATE Central is collecting links to ATE project and center newsletters, with the intention of publishing these in the ATE Social Media Guide. If your project or center publishes a newsletter, please let us know by emailing the link to info@atecentral.net.

Follow ATE Central on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with all things new at ATE Central and in the ATE Community as well as in the world of STEM Education

Want to know which ATE Projects and Centers and ATE partners and collaborators are using Social Media? Check out our ATE Social Media Directory and follow them too!

Can CWIS Software Help Support Your Project Goals?

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. We'd be happy to provide you with more information about CWIS and give you a quick tour of its features — please e-mail cwis@scout.wisc.edu to get started!

Find Out More About ATE Central

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.

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