When we were at the University of South Carolina (see post here), we learned that one of the big research areas for fuel cells was finding a better catalyst. The platinum they use now is very expensive and leaves carbon monoxide that can foul the works. According to this article in Nanodot, there has been a breakthrough that combines platinum with another element that helps eliminate the fouling problem.

I arrived in Galveston yesterday to attend a conference on “Closing the Gaps for Students Pursuing High Skilled Non-Traditional Occupations.” I’ve blogged a couple of times before (here and here) about this subject. Actually, I whined more than blogged because I must admit that I don’t know how to attract more women into welding and more men into dental assisting. I am here trying to fix that.

The trainer, Mimi Lufkin, is with the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity. So far it has been pretty informative. Of course I came in with a base of complete ignorance and nowhere to go but up!

UPDATE: Too see what Mimi does when she is not doing her work as Executive Director of NAPE - check out this link.  Yes - that is really her.

Last Monday, FedEx brought my new Garmin nuvi 660 from Amazon. I have been playing with it ever since doing important things like loading the locations of all the Starbucks outlets in the country. I have been very impressed. It has already kept me from being late to an off-campus meeting. I plan on testing it some more on my trip to TACTE (Texas Association of College Technical Educators) in Galveston (more blogging on that later).

The fun part really came when I heard my Garmin telling me that I needed to exit toward “the Federated States of Micronesia.” I looked at the screen and realized that I was about to exit I-35 toward FM 308. In Texas, FM stands for “Farm-to-Market” and has very little to do with Micronesia. Apparently this happened because I was using the “British Voice” on the otherwise superb text-to-speech feature. According to the Garmin, the “Voice, American English - Jill” was fixed in version 1.4 (”Corrected problem where FM was always spoken as ‘Federated States of Micronesia’”). I wonder what it would say to “RR” (Ranch Road).

It is absolutely incredible how much these devices have advanced since the first time I used one six or seven years ago!

UPDATE: The ‘American voice’ did indeed fix my issue, although I miss the accent.  I think the improvement that impresses me the most is the speed of recalculating routes.  My old PDA attached system didn’t know what to do when you left the route.  The nuvi recalculates immediately.

I blogged a while back about Richard Froeschle who is Deputy Director of Labor Market and Career Information at the Texas Workforce Commission. Another interesting part of his presentation at CTAT’s Education Open Source was on first-year salaries for new graduates. Here is the slide he showed:

Please note that five of the top ten are the result of CTE AAS degrees. This is real data from real salaries, not promises made by any school. I think if there was a longitudinal study that followed these cohorts the results would show that certain AAS degrees lead to higher pay overall.

Someone may point to the data that shows 4-year degrees lead to greater lifetime earnings. My response would be that those figures are for ALL two-year degrees, including those that are general studies and purely academic.

Keep telling the young people you know that getting paid is about having marketable skills and not about having a certain “level” of degree. You may want to mention it to policy-makers as well.

Update: Froeschle’s presentation is available here on the CTAT site.

Maybe one day - but I’m not worried enough about the end of the education business to go looking for another job just yet. Check out this article on “hacking and patching” the hardware and software between your ears.

It is old news and I’ve blogged it before, but many still don’t know. If you haven’t taken the time to look at the final report on contextual math learning from the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, you should. The report, “Building Academic Skills in Context: Testing the Value of Enhanced Math Learning in CTE”, was completed in 2005. From the abstract:

An experimental study tested a model for enhancing mathematics instruction in five high school career and technical education (CTE) programs (agriculture, auto technology, business/ marketing, health, and information technology)… The experimental teachers worked with math teachers in communities of practice to develop CTE instructional activities that integrated more mathematics into the occupational curriculum. After 1 year of the math-enhanced CTE lessons averaging 10% of class time, students in the experimental classrooms performed significantly better on 2 tests of math ability–the TerraNova and ACCUPLACER^®–without any negative impact on measures of occupational/technical knowledge.

The Waco ISD effort to teach contextualized math that I blogged about earlier is a little different. They are putting context into a CTE-based math class instead of putting more math into an existing CTE class. The concept should still work, though. I can hardly wait to see the results.

Contextualizing math (RELEVANCE) is the key to improving math skills in this country. Many teachers still confuse methodology and rigor. They believe rigor involves making it hard to learn. Rigor is about what the student learns, not how the teacher teaches. The bias in the academic world is that students must value knowledge because it is intellectually beautiful, not because it is useful. Teachers tend to think that way*, but most students do not.

*All human beings have this tendency. I can’t imagine why some people go glassy-eyed just because I go on for hours about the algebraic beauty of relational databases.

eLearning Pundit points to this post on the Higher Ed Watch blog. Read the whole thing.

Massachusetts education officials are looking to use kinder, gentler language to describe schools that are not making the grade. I am not going to offer my opinion of standardized testing at this time. I will say that whatever word you use to describe failure eventually becomes a pejorative. Think of “special” as in “special education.”

… but it is a super-efficient light bulb that puts out 140 lumens per watt.

The Wikipedia article on CTE (listed under vocational education) is short and not very detailed. Despite the brevity, there is some controversy. Will some of you technical education experts work to improve and expand the article?

I recently heard that if you call UTI (Universal Technical Institute) and ask them what it costs to go through a program, they won’t tell you. What they say is, “Our counselors work with every student to make certain that the cost of school is not a problem. The cost of school is different for every student.” This is a obvious lie. The cost of the training program is the same. What is not certain is how many loans will be required after other sources are exhausted. They don’t want to quote the real price for the same reason that car salesmen want to talk to you about monthly payments and almost anything else other than the actual price of the car.

This made me wonder about what information is available online. I looked at the websites of both UTI and ITT Tech. Although there is a lot of information about aid and loans, I could not find a page where the cost of the programs is directly or indirectly addressed. Neither site listed, “How much does it cost?” in the FAQ’s. Does anyone really believe that this is not a very frequently asked question?

As a contrast, I invite anyone to visit our TSTC Waco page for prospective students. “How much does it cost?” is there and so is a complete list of cost sheets for every program. Every cost sheet shows the full cost of tuition, fees, books, and tools broken down by term. For an example, here is a link to the cost sheet for an Avionics AAS degree. I would be willing to bet that most for-profit programs would cost three to five times more.

Deal with people and organizations that are transparent, forthcoming, and are willing to treat you with respect. Those that won’t answer your questions probably have something to hide.

It might seem like a heresy here in Texas, but in one way Texas and France are alike – we both produce too many psychology graduates. This article on the BBC site discusses the state of the French higher education system:

There are 65,000 psychology students in France - that is a quarter of the European total for that subject…

At the local careers office, counsellor Agnes Urhweiller told me she worried that the French education system was completely out of sync with the world of business.

Ms Urhweiller regularly sees hundreds of students who are well qualified but who have no real skills to offer employers.

“In France, many young people don’t study the right subjects,” she said as she marked a skills test for a young job seeker.

“I advise them they need practical qualifications to work. I come from the private sector and I know that private businesses need young people and, of course, that is where the money is, too. But our education system is a ‘has been’ - it’s too rigid,” Ms Urhweiller said.

I recently attended a presentation by Richard Froeschle, Deputy Director for Labor Market and Career Information at the Texas Workforce Commission (PowerPoint available here). Among many fascinating facts I learned was the news that Texas actually produced more four-year graduates than the state could employ last year. Unfortunately, many of them had degrees in psychology or general studies instead of the science and technology degrees that are in demand.

One of the great virtues of Career and Technology Education is the insistence that the education must lead to marketable job skills. Those skills, because they are marketable, also build the economy and create more jobs. We are still working to get the message out!

I enjoyed the promotional video for CTE programs at the Mesquite school district:

It seems to hit a lot of the themes that might interest students.

AutoblogGreen considers the question of whether green car technology will spell the end of local small mechanic shops. The contention is that high-tech green cars will require equipment and expertise that only the dealers can afford. A parallel is drawn to the today’s cars, which have come close to ending the era of the “do-it-yourself” tinkering mechanic.

There is also a discussion of how hard it is for today’s technician to decide what the job will entail fifteen years from now. That is also a problem for auto technology instructional programs.

We have talked about some of this before.

This video shows how NIU is using a video game to teach numerical methods to Mechanical Engineering students:

I’ll bet grades and ability to apply numerical methods are way up!

(Is that Steve Ballmer I hear shouting “Developers!” and screaming in the background music? - I think so. Check out this YouTube video)

I ran across the following in the Waco ISD CTE Newsletter for March 2008. It isn’t available online yet.

Jonathan Lozano, a senior at A.J. Moore Academy was recently surprised by an envelope from TSTC. He opened the envelope to find a Certificate of Academic Achievement. This certificate is awarded to part-time students earning a 3.75 or above during the previous semester. Jonathan earned a 4.0 in his Welding Technology Dual Credit class. His name was also published in the February edition of the Tech Times.

This is Jonathan’s second year in Welding Technology. He earned six hours last year, he earned three hours last semester and is enrolled in three hours this semester.

Jonathan plans on pursuing a Certificate in Welding from TSTC and eventually become an architect. He believes that the knowledge, skills, and abilities learned in welding will easily transfer into coursework in architecture. Jonathan should complete his certificate program in December of 2008.

Will welding make him a better architect? If he designs steel structures, you know it will! He will also have a skill he can make good money with while he works on that architecture degree.

The article is another good one. Money quote:

Degree and diploma programs can vary wildly in price among for-profit schools, and those prices can look even higher when compared with public schools.

According to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at ITT Technical Institute costs about $72,900.

That same degree costs roughly half — $36,890 — at University of Phoenix. And at Middle Tennessee State University, the same degree would cost about $21,000 for in-state students.

Also, be sure to check out this PDF comparing costs.

(via e-Learning Pundit)

… and it was invented in the 1960’s! I have always been fascinated by the super high-flying, super-fast, titanium wonder called the SR-71 “Blackbird.” Read this reminiscence by a former SR-71 pilot if you are also affected by this fascination. How can you not like L.A. to Washington DC in 64 minutes?

This wonder was built by American engineers and technicians and has never been equaled. Only a big improvement in STEM education can make that sort of innovation happen again.

This would make an interesting class project.

Here is some more interesting background on the probation that I blogged about before.

The Denton Independent School District’s Sara & Troy LaGrone Advanced Technology Center is featured on the Education Design Showcase site. I have been to the LaGrone center and can testify that it is a very impressive facility. They also have a dedicated faculty and staff and wonderful students. The folks at Denton should be very proud.

As you can see, this is a building that makes a statement that CTE is important and deserves beautiful and soaring architecture every bit as much as any university program.

Denton’s site features the ATC here (with video).

The invaluable e-Learning Pundit has a post today that points to this Wall Street Journal article called “The Downside of Diplomas.”

“This high cost leaves many students with heavy debt loads. And while tuition has risen steadily, the portion covered by federal loans has fallen. Private-sector lenders filled the gap — until recently. The credit crunch has made it more difficult for lenders to repackage student loans and sell them on.”

Other revelations in the article include:

• For-profit enrollment has grown 14% annually for the last decade
• Admissions advisers who are commissioned sales people have a conflict of interest (Really?)
• For-profits charge as much as 10 times more for an associate’s degree as a local community college
• 34% of ITT’s student tuition and fees come from private sector loans
• Revenues are now shrinking and enrollments are down
• Promotional spending is 25% of total revenue (holy cow!)
• For-profit stocks have fallen a third on average since January 1
• Tuition has gone up at the schools faster than inflation for more than a decade (so they are like a lot of public universities in some ways!)

I posted on the for-profit school credit crunch earlier. I would highly recommend reading the WSJ article and looking at the stock graph.

The Daily Mail reports that a “Safe Text” street has been created in London. It seems that too many people were being hurt in collisions with posts, trash cans, and other people because they were looking down at their phones while texting and walking. As a result, they have put pads on stationary objects. I’m not sure how this helps when two texting individuals run in to each other. Will they require padded people wearing helmets next?

I have had students who could hold their phones under the table and text with their thumbs without looking. Sometimes they were cheating. Perhaps we should hold classes in “no-look texting” (like we used to do with typing) instead of putting pads on everything.

- and a $20,000 a year income. e-Learning Pundit has a great post on the real cost of a proprietary school education.

As a follow-up to my post on “supercomputing” technicians, I want to offer you a link to the folding@home project. This project of Stanford is designed to use idle CPU time all over the world to help solve an important problem in medical research. It is something like the earlier SETI program, but with a object that more people can get behind. Read the site for details.

TSTC Waco has been participating in this program since interest in distributed computing spiked. We are currently ranked higher than many big, well-known universities in our contributions. It would be a worthwhile technology or service project for your CTE program, too. Lesson plans focusing on computing power amounts and values could be coordinated. The students get very excited about moving up in the stats, too.