Watching this video from the NBC evening news will help you understand the post that follows.

Yesterday, we had the privilege to visit the founder and board of the IGNITE program in Fredericksburg, Texas. The high school rocketry program, founded by teacher Brett Williams in the mid-nineties, has spread across the state and is moving across the borders.  TSTC is looking for ways to partner with the IGNITE/SystemsGo program as it grows.

The learning is entirely project-based.  Students work in teams to design working  hybrid rockets that meet the specifications for each part of the curriculum.  It has been very successful.  To quote Mr. Williams:

This is a whole new way of teaching. We really are working on not just educating our students, but developing them for the workforce. Coming out of this high school program, these students will understand design and development, testing, analysis, and program management - all things the industry needs in the workforce of tomorrow.

Here are some pictures from our trip (warning - low quality iPhone snaps ahead):

Brett Williams (right) in his classroom discussing rocket science with TSTC System Chancellor Dr. Bill Segura.

Another view of the Fredericksburg High School “rocket room.” TSTC Waco President Elton Stuckly is pictured facing the camera next to Dr. Segura. You can see from here that the room is part of an old auditorium which has been divided into rooms.

Redbird 10, designed by high school students,  which will be launched at White Sands.  They are hoping for 100,000 feet.

Redbird 10 fin detail. The legs behind give you an idea of scale.  This a big metal bird.

The nosecone, designed and built by the students, will likely carry a university research payload.

Access to valve area where the N2O (nitrous oxide) oxidizer will be released to facilitate the burning of the otherwise inert solid fuel.  This system is much safer than a standard solid fuel rocket in which the fuel and oxidizer are permanently mixed together.

Failure IS an option!  These are the remains of a rocket that crashed at White Sands, possibly due to a failure in the system which releases the oxidizer.  The students have been doing a failure analysis.

All of the technologies required to build a rocket are vital to the United States as a world power.  Here we see an increasingly rare sight - a real machine shop in a high school.  A consortium of local machine shops also help the students with their projects.

Some thoughts about the program:

• It works.  The students involved are going on to study engineering and engineering technologies in college
• There was a lot of inspiration and determination to do the impossible on the part of Brett Williams
• The Fredericksburg Independent School District and the entire community had great courage and confidence to make this possible
• It can be, and is being replicated

As Mark Long of TSTC Publishing said while we were there, “It would have been a good idea anywhere, but it happened here first for a reason.”  Kudos to those visionaries who were willing to put hard work behind their visions.  Lives are being changed because of it.

*STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

I had the opportunity to visit the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas on Saturday.  It was a great day with hundreds of teams of intelligent and motivated kids.  I saw teams from Colombia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, and all across the USA.  I snapped some pictures with my iPhone.

The results of the competition can be found HERE.  Congratulations to the team from Greenville, TX listed at the top.  (Innovation First/VEX is also headquartered in Greenville).

Banner at the door of the Dallas Convention Center

Note that the competition got support from names like Autodesk, EMC, and NASA.

The main competition floor for middle and high school students

The main competition that I watched involved both autonomous and controlled operation to stack blue or red cubes in designated areas, scoring for the respective team.  Defense was also practiced and a solid “blue” goal didn’t always stay that way for long.

One of the many Chinese teams attending the competition

A Colombian post-secondary team

The competition is piloting post-secondary competition to give engineering students some hands-on experience.  There were far fewer teams than on the secondary side, but they were from all over (including Rice University here in Texas).

The Syntax Error team "mascot" costume

Zany hats, t-shirts, and costumes helped to show team spirit.

Repair work with Dremel in the pits

A lot of schools use these robots and the curriculum built around them to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines.  Check out the link above for more information.  I really wish that I had taken my Flip video camera to this one!

UPDATE: I note that the Mythbusters tested the VEX system and came away favorably impressed.  Go HERE to read the story. (NOTE: The VEX system is no longer sold at Radio Shack).

There is good coverage at Popular Science -

(and a photo slideshow).

There was a great (FRONT PAGE!) article in the Waco paper on Monday that I have been too busy to blog about. The title says Local officials: Employers looking for skills and specialized training, not just four-year degrees. It mentions programs at TSTC (Aviation Maintenace and Automotive Tech) and McClennan Community College (Accounting and Nursing). The article also covers the important link to high schools for the programs.

My take: It’s a great article that gets to the heart of what we need to be doing - getting students serious about job skills starting in high school (not about degrees alone).

The Robot Ravensat Rapoport Academy have begun the long journey toward competitive glory.  Just at start - but it is great to see high school students working on engineering technology projects.

Thanks go out to TSTC Robotics and engineering technology faculty that are helping!

On Saturday I worked in the customer service contest for our last secondary regional of the year.  As I mentioned before, TSTC Waco hosts four Secondary SkillsUSA regionals every year.  It is a major undertaking, but well worth it.  It is great to see so many dedicated students working on technical and employability skills.

Of course, I would love a lot of these top-quality technical students to attend TSTC to help us continue to compete successfully in the post-secondary version!

Check out this video if you are not familiar with SkillsUSA:

Popular Mechanics notices the skilled trades shortage:

Only 16 percent of the 1000-plus high schoolers Ridgid interviewed said they had taken or were planning on taking a vocational class in the skilled trades. But once they actually took such a class, the respondents became twice as likely to consider pursuing the trade as a career.

Read the whole thing.

This time it is Robotics, Rocketry, Research at the Rapoport Academy Early College High School.  TSTC is involved in helping with these projects.  More secondary and post-secondary cooperation in CTE!  Read all about it on the Texas High School Project website HERE.

An article in the Corsicana Daily Sun about CTE at Corsicana High School mentions secondary and post-secondary connections twice (Corsicana is about 55 miles from TSTC Waco).  The building trades teacher said “his program has 38 young men working on their carpentry level I certification, which is very much like a college transcript, and are being taught the same curriculum as students in Waco at TSTC”

The new automotive teacher was most recently teaching in the award-wining Toyota program at TSTC Waco.  We hated to seem him go, but we are glad that his high school students will get the benefit of his experience and dedication.  Our best wishes go out to Michael Schmidt in his new postion at Corsicana High School.

If the tide in technical education is going to continue to turn, high schools and colleges need to persevere in finding ways to partner.  As we work on more articulation, dual credit, and innovative programs our students and our economy will be the winners.

The Texas Comptroller’s Office has released a report called Texas Works 2008: Training and Education for All Texans which has really gotten it right.  Among the important facts in the executive summary:

• Slightly less than 20% of Texas jobs required a Bachelor’s degree in 2007
• 43.65% of the jobs paying better than average salaries do not require a Bachelor’s degree
• More than 343,000 jobs in Texas in 2007 that paid above average were for Associate’s degrees (mostly Associate of Applied Science degrees - technical degrees)
• There were nearly 80,000 jobs that paid above average that could be had with a certificate
• Dwindling enrollment in vocational training is hurting the economy
• We are producing TOO MANY four-year degrees (in the wrong things)

I think that the following graphic really says it all (click to enlarge):

The recommendations made are as follows:

1. Make more parents and students aware of all postsecondary educational options, including career and technical education (CTE), and the availability of financial assistance.
2. As part of this effort, use data on educational and employment outcomes to quantify the economic benefits of CTE, and publicize these results to help make current and prospective students aware of its value and promise.
3. Ensure that state academic requirements, such as those represented by the new “four-by-four” policy and new GPA calculation standards, do not prevent or discourage students from enrolling in career and technology courses.
4. Establish a $25 million Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) fund to provide support for postsecondary CTE courses, including startup funding for new programs.
5. Link any incentive funding for postsecondary technical education to measures that help ensure the state receives a positive return on its investment.

All I can say is HOLY COW  and CUE THE HALLELUJAH CHORUS!!!!!

You’ll find a good article here about the visit of our mobile alternative energy lab to Taylor High School. Energy guru Sid Bolfing took it on the road for the high school students.

A 17 year-old Texas high school student built his own usable electric car for around $10,000. It sounds like the project taught him a lot of technical skills, too.

“I showed him how to use a grinder, a SawzAll and a drill and stuff like that,” says the father, who owns River City Hydraulics Inc., a hydraulics maintenance and repair company near downtown San Antonio. “He just went to town on it.”

Update: A picture!

Over at Infinite Thinking Machine, there is a good post about the ‘K12 Open Minds Conference.’  It is a good read.  There is also a link to another Linux Terminal Server Project (K12LTSP) that is something like the Edubuntu project I posted about here.  This one is based on CentOS 5 and includes instructions to set up Moodle

BTW: I am pretty happy with my dual-boot Ubuntu 8.04 so far, but I am looking forward to the release of 8.10 for the advertised 3G improvements.  ATT does not support any platform but Windows.

Over at the Mpowered blog, there is a post about a proposal to require California students to take algebra in the 8th grade.  The post does a good job of showing the illogical underpinnings of the argument, so I don’t think that I need to address it.  I will say that my experience with my own kids indicates that good teachers make a difference and early algebra does not. (I linked to the category since I couldn’t find a permalink.  The article title is ‘Algebra earlier policy not proven anywhere.’)

‘Early Algebra’ is another example of ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.’  The Texas 4×4 (four years of math, english, science, and social studies) is in danger of the same accusation as it now stands.  Although the Texas 4×4  for high school students is a good idea, it rests on a shaky foundation.  The facts are plain - students who have passed Algebra 2 with decent grades don’t actually perform at the advertised level.  Students who are unprepared for Precalculus and Calculus will do poorly in those subjects, too.  Since four years of math are required, the teachers and principals will have the choice of continuing to pass under-prepared students, or failing them, causing them miss graduation.  History tells us what will happen.

I support four years of math in high school with the following provisos:

1. A meaningful technology or business math course must be an alternative for those not headed to Calculus
2. Failure MUST be an option
3. Provisions will have to be made for ‘credit recovery’ when students fail
4. Passing a dual-credit College Algebra course should meet the 4th year requirement*

I believe that these ideas are needed to make the 4×4 effective.

*I realize that this may seem strange, but college-readiness is the point and basic math college-readiness and passing College Algebra are close to the same.  I consider this to be focusing on the desired result rather than the process of getting there.  Also, it has always been an issue for me that a full college academic course requiring more work than a full year high school course only counts .5 high school credits.

Be sure to check out the Wildcat Drafting and Technology Integration blog which has just been added to the blogroll (reciprocal linking is a general policy) . You will enjoy it especially if you are involved in teaching drafting, GPS, etc.  The main proprietor appears to be “Tabasco Jack” Reece who is a Wheeler High School Engineering Drawing and Design teacher.  His class website with course descriptions and assignments is here. You may not get many hits from my blog, Jack, but you are most welcome!

UPDATE:  Tabasco Jack responds (see comments)

Over at the Conglomerate Blog, law professor Karl Okamoto wrote an interesting post about the unrealistic expectations of his students regarding lawyer salaries.  Interpreting median salary data can be difficult unless you are willing to dig deeper and lawyer salaries are definitely skewed at the upper percentiles by “superstar” lawyers who make fifty or more times the median.

Although “superstar technician” salaries may be harder to find, secondary and post-secondary tech ed students often don’t have a clear view of the salary landscape either.  In no particular order, here are some payday facts of which students are often unaware:

1. Salary amount is a function of marketable job skills and skill level, not degrees
2. Technicians for high-demand occupations often receive sizable signing bonuses
3. Starting and median pay are very location-dependent, so if you want to live at home you may have to live on less
4. Starting pay is just that - chances for advancement are more important
5. Successful experience is king - skilled technicians advance in pay quickly once they have proven their worth
6. Recent graduates seldom appreciate what taxes, deductions, and the cost of living will do to those great-sounding offers
7. The market is not ‘fair’ - it rewards those who have the skills needed when they are needed is if by pure chance
8. Although it is sometimes better to be lucky than good, you can increase your chances of being lucky by being good
9. Your first employer may look at your transcript grades thus impacting your employability or starting salary (I learned this the hard way)
10. Starting employers ARE interested in your involvement in other activities at school because it says something about character, personality, and soft skills
11. Technicians DO have a career path for advancement and can often be paid while their employers contribute to further education
12. Well-rounded technicians become bosses and make more money (and come back to their alma mater to hire more graduates!!!)

If I left something out, put it in the comments!

I have been ‘wasting time’ today playing around with the latest version of Ubuntu (8.04) on a Sun VirtualBox VM on my laptop.  It has been a lot of geeky fun figuring it out and I am very impressed by the free Sun virtual machine software.  The laptop is a Dell Precision M6300 with an Intel Core 2 T7250 and 4 GB of RAM running Windows Vista Business.  I have installed many other distros and I like Ubuntu’s latest enough to consider setting up a dual boot on this machine.

I had not previously been familiar with Edubuntu, though.  That is the version of Ubuntu with educational software pre-installed, including teaching and management software.  It is available in workstation and server versions.  It has a lot of potential to extend the educational life of older hardware.  The server version is set up for terminal sessions.  The terminals can be really old computers with sub GHz processors and less than 128 MB of RAM.

Over at Danny Thompson’s ‘CoachDANNY’s Blog’ there is a good post on using an Edubuntu terminal server setup as a Network+ class project.  Coach Danny includes links to lots of good documentation.  This would be a great combination of learning and service assignment for any high school or college networking class.  It could really benefit some cash-strapped elementary, middle, and secondary schools, too.

Edubuntu Terminal Server Installation

If you teach computer/network support classes, give it a try.

The San Diego Union-Tribune notes a new effort to reintegrate academics and CTE.  The idea is to make academics relevant and make it clear to CTE students that they can go to college.  This seems like a no-brainer to me, but some people believe that a wall must separate the two.

Here is the good stuff:

“I think there’s really this false dichotomy between saying ‘college-ready’ and ‘career ready,’” said Kathleen Porter, director of Career, Technical and Adult Education for the Poway Unified School District. “Having real-world connections in academic classes is every bit as important as having real-world classes reinforce academic skills.”

At Poway High, Advanced Placement physics students supplement their lectures on electrical circuits by visiting the school’s auto shop to see the circuits at work. And as a result of consulting with the physics teacher, auto shop teacher Ken Faverty said he teaches his students more about multiple circuits to reinforce classroom concepts they will face on state science tests.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: I have blogged about California’s CTE and the Governator before.  I am glad to see things moving in the right direction.

The Ohio Department of Education has designed a web page to inform families about CTE.  The statistics shared on that page would be a shock to a lot of people who have bought into the dominant narrative about high school CTE “dumping grounds.”

In FY2007:

• 24 percent of Ohio high school students were enrolled in Career-Tech education;
• 36 percent of Career-Tech students were enrolled in physics, chemistry or an advanced science;
• 47 percent took Algebra II or advanced mathematics;
• 16,749 career-tech students were enrolled in college tech Prep programs, giving them the opportunity to earn college credit for free;
• 93.7 percent of career-tech students passed all five parts of the Ohio Graduation Test ;
• 54.2 percent of career-tech students enrolled in a higher education program after graduation.

Chris Doessler over at one of the ACTE blogs posts about an Associated Press poll on education.  He points out interesting and even contradictory answers.  I think these result from uncritical acceptance of the media narrative.  Read it and see what you think.

TSTC Waco, with help from a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) grant*, is hosting a Summer Bridge program for Waco ISD rising 11th and 12th graders.  The students are raising their placement test scores, eating well, having fun, and getting their hands on some cool technology.  They are also receiving some survey class college credit.

These students will be academically prepared for college.  The video indicates that they will be enthusiastic about continuing past high school, as well.  I can’t think of a better way for them to spend a summer.

*The grant did not cover the cost.  TSTC and WISD had to help.

Last week we had a new video of the TSTC Gear Up Summer Welding Camp.  This week it is the Gear Up Summer Game Design Camp.

This stuff is going on all this term.  Since we also have nearly 2,600 students in regular classes, faculty and staff are awfully busy this summer.

Video of high school students at the Gear Up Welding Camp at TSTC Waco:

Now OTHER people at TSTC have Flip Ultra video cameras.  I’m a trendsetter!

TechYes Blog has a post on an addition to the TechYES Student Literacy Certification Program. Science is the new module. The whole set is available on the website and looks like it is reasonably priced. As I have said before, we should not assume they know how to use technology wisely and efficiently just because they are called ‘digital natives’.

Our last video of the day featured a creative safety video made by Mr. Jones of the Morrisville, PA high school shop class. The same class and teacher showed up on local television news because of a project to make toys for needy kids at Christmas.

As I pointed out in my post on technical students with social concerns, CTE students aren’t only interested in technology. They also want to make a difference. That’s cool because while most of us whine and wait for others to make the change, they actually have the skills to build a better world.