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When it comes to sharing information about the ATE community and its dedication to improving the education of America’s technical workforce, blogs offer a great platform to engage and inform others. Over the past few weeks, a number of blog posts covering inspirational stories, detailed research, and personal experiences have appeared. Below are a few that we hope will inspire further reading, and maybe a little bit of writing of your own:

Preparing Students for Information Technology Careers: The Role of Career Technical Education

Jill Denner, project PI of Beyond Marketing to Stealth Recruitment: Creating ICT Pathways from High School to College and Work for Underrepresented Groups, was recently featured on the ETR etc. blog. In this post, Denner discusses the project’s research findings along with strategies to boost career technical education (CTE) pathways in IT fields. There is also a link to three Tip Sheets designed to help initiate educator, administrator, and industry partnerships.

McHenry County College students Joseph Ignoffo and Alex Garcia work with snap cubes during a spatial visualization skills workshop.

Researchers who have demonstrated that it is possible to improve students' spatial visualization skills, which are key for success in some STEM courses and careers, are testing their curriculum with community college students.

The first 95 students who completed the non-credit spatial skills course at Del Mar College, McHenry County College, and Tidewater Community College earned on average, one full letter grade higher (a grade of B) in the introductory STEM course they took than students who qualified for the spatial skills booster, but opted not to take it (and averaged a grade of C).

PDFs of the lesson plans and other content are available at  http://www.higheredservices.org/spatial-course-mini-lectures/

John F. Ramirez, a Del Mar College student, was among 150 undergraduates from around the world and 62 Qatar University students who participated in the First World Congress on Undergraduate Research in Qatar in November 2016.

When John F. Ramirez enrolled in Del Mar College the week before classes started in August 2014, the only open Biology I course was highlighted as the "phages" section.

Ramirez had no idea what phages were. But he figured if the labs were too complicated for him, the instructor would let him know it. Instead of washing out, Ramirez excelled with the encouragement of Professor J. Robert Hatherill. Students in the "phages" section learn basic biology concepts by conducting research on bacteriophages, which are viruses that live on bacteria.

During 2016 Ramirez's independent research on "interesting tidbits" about bacteriophages earned him a first place in the cellular and molecular biology category of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) student poster competition. In a separate competition, Ramirez was selected to attend The First World Congress on Undergraduate Research in Qatar in November.

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Over the past few months, there have been a number of developments in the already fascinating world of robotics.

On October 6^th, three European scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work developing nanoscale machines – the world’s smallest robots. These molecule-sized robots are manipulated through the conversion of chemical energy into mechanical energy. Many believe that nano-machines may have important implications in a variety of fields, including medicine.

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This ninety-five-page report – The State of American Jobs – from the Pew Research Center touches on a lot of valuable data for the ATE community related to the changing economic landscape, workers’ ideas about their own commitment to retraining and honing their skillset(s), and how workers view the role of higher education as part of this process.

The report begins by examining Changes in the American workplace, helping to pick apart the socio-economic factors at the core of this evolution. A significant focus of this section is the shift in job opportunities away from those that need manual or physical skillsets and towards those that require high levels of social or analytical skills.  Not surprisingly, employment opportunities are much higher for those with more experience and job preparation (whether from education, training, or gleaned through what my grandmother Hazel always referred to as the school of hard knocks – i.e. life experience.)

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As the official archive for the ATE community, we work closely with projects and centers to collect and store the curriculum, professional development materials, videos, and other digital content created with ATE funding. It’s important to us that the process of archiving these valuable deliverables is as seamless as possible for grantees. To that end, we’ve recently introduced a few new archiving resources to help as you think through the archiving process.

For instance, last month we launched a new archive submission form to simplify the archiving process. The form is a quick and easy way to upload the materials you’ve created directly to the ATE Central site. Each request is reviewed, processed, and published by ATE Central staff, and best of all, you can keep track of your past and current archiving requests, all via your ATE Central user account.

The free e-textbook Introduction to the Automated Warehouse that SCTE developed with industry is available at http://www.supplychainteched.org/etextbook.html.

This year the National Center for Supply Chain Technology Education (SCTE) launched a strategy to address the shortage of technicians qualified to work in automated warehouses and distribution centers.

SCTE is convening Industry-Educator Workforce Forums to introduce two-year college educators to the career opportunities within automated warehouses and for the educators to meet with representatives of the nation's largest retail and shipping companies.

EMSI, a private labor market data provider, estimates that supply-chain, technician-related employment across the United States will grow by 9.1% with more than one million new jobs created between 2015 and 2025.

SCTE has further analyzed labor market data for its State Labor Market Data Briefs that provide detailed information about the expected job growth in the 19 states with the busiest and biggest supply chain "centroids" of mammoth warehouses near major airports and highways.

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Across a variety of careers and industries, skill standards offer an essential set of expectations that help define what workers need to know and do to succeed. As many of us in the ATE community prepare students for their career of choice, these standards provide an effective framework for developing courses, learning best practices, and identifying industry-specific benchmarks for success.

Recently, the 2016 Core Skill Standards for Bioscience Technicians Toolkit was released, highlighting a set of core technical competencies and skills that are shared across the Bioscience Lab, Biomanufacturing, and Medical Device domains of the bioscience industry.

ATE Central sat down with report authors Jeanette Mowery, Bio-Link Leadership Team, and John Carrese, Bio-Link, to find out a bit more.

Educators who complete the free registration for the BYO Video Tool can combine snippets of ATETV video with their college's content by using YouTube Video Editor software.

Creating high quality videos to recruit students for advanced technology careers while showcasing particular college programs is much easier with the new Build Your Own Customized Recruitment Video Tool (BYO Video Tool).

An innovative Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program collaboration is providing all of ATETV's video footage, including uncut interviews with students, employers, and educators, in a vast keyword-searchable database accessible on www.TeachingTechnicians.org, a website provided by the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education (SC ATE) National Resource Center for Expanding Excellence in Technician Education.

The BYO Video Tool is easy to navigate and free to all users thanks to the National Science Foundation's ATE grant support. Pellet Productions produces ATETV videos that inform viewers in English and Spanish about educational pathways and career opportunities in advanced technology fields. The BYO Video Tool and instructions reside on TeachingTechnicians.org, where SC ATE also provides an online matching service that proactively links STEM educators with ATE-funded professional development opportunities and other STEM education resources.

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ATE community members may want to check out the 2016 New Media Consortium (NMC) Education Horizon Report. Published annually since 2002, this report is authored by 58 higher education specialists from around the globe in partnership with EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to both investigating the role of information technology (IT) in higher education and advocating for effective implementation of IT in higher education contexts. According to the report’s executive summary, “With more than 14 years of research and publications, [the NMC Education Horizons Report] can be regarded as the world’s longest-running exploration of emerging technology trends and uptake in education.”