ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION ·
MARCH 2010
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.
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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
The Automotive Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC) is a consortium of 25 community colleges and 21 corporate automotive companies working to strengthen the competency and global competitiveness of the automotive manufacturing workforce. The consortium creates and sustains an innovative, responsive and standards-based workforce development system that meets the skill requirements of the auto industry. Business/industry partnerships are created to validate the skills and knowledge required by multi-skilled manufacturing and transportation technicians and to deliver the technical education that meets the high-priority needs of the automotive manufacturers, suppliers and dealers. The impact of the Center is increased through mentoring of other colleges that are establishing automotive manufacturing and transportation technician programs. The Center and its partners create a transportable and updatable model for automotive manufacturing and transportation technician education through the use of a DACUM/Delphi process and the use of electronic technologies. A pipeline of educated workers is built on models that successfully recruit high school students into two-year college programs and also articulate with programs in four-year colleges. Research on technology is transferred to the applied stage through workshops for two-year college faculty provided by four-year college partners. The evaluation of the Center includes assessing its impact on the automotive industry, on community college practice and on student recruitment, retention and placement.
Here is a small sample of the valuable resources in ATE Central that focus on Automotive Technology:
From NetWorks:
Developed by General Motors, this site offers interactive online tools about technology, energy, and environmental issues. High school students can explore how fuel cells work and how hydrogen is produced, read articles and study guides for young drivers, investigate physics lessons about safety, gather information about more environmentally greener automobiles, conduct an electrolysis experiment, see a fuel cell animation, and more. Middle school students can explore the inside of an engine, play games to learn about hybrid transportation systems, complete crossword puzzles, learn about automotive careers, fuels and energy, technology, and the automotive vehicle industry through playing games and reading.
From Macomb Community College:
There is a clear need for a systematic training program on HEV, particularly in Southeast Michigan, where automotive manufacturers and their suppliers are highly concentrated. The goal of this project is to fill this need by developing an industry-based learning environment for HEV technology. The guiding vision of this HEV Learning Environment is an integrated education and industrial based training program for students in automotive programs in community colleges, automotive service technicians, engineering technologists, and K-12 automotive teachers. In order to develop this program, a partnership has been formed between faculty of Macomb Community College Automotive Technology Program and the Division of Engineering Technology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. The partnership also includes industrial partners from major automobile manufacturers and suppliers.
From the National Center for Manufacturing Education (NCME):
With increasingly stringent Federal Emissions Standards, automobile manufacturers have been required to decrease both tail pipe emissions and the evaporative emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC). Some of these VOCs are hydrocarbons (gasoline and oil), which vaporize and escape from an automobile's engine and fuel system. Automobile manufacturers have addressed this issue with the implementation of Evaporative (EVAP) Emissions Systems. This article will describe the major system components and explain how the EVAP systems operate.
For more ATE resources on Automotive Technology in ATE Central please visit: http://atecentral.net/s=Automotive+Technology
We are extremely pleased to announce that ATE Central has been awarded a second grant from the National Science Foundation which expands the scope of the project and will allow us to continue supporting the ATE community for the next four years. We look forward to working with all our partners within ATE as well as WGBH Boston and others as ATE Central moves forward into this second phase! For more information please e-mail Rachael Bower (bower@scout.wisc.edu).
ATE Central will be presenting this month at the League for Innovation in the Community College Conference, in Baltimore, MD. If you are attending the conference, please stop in for our workshop on Sunday, March 28th from 11:00 am to noon, in Key 10, Level 2, Hilton. We will also be helping out with the ATE booth in the Exhibit Hall. Please drop in for a visit while you are at the conference.
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 (ealmasy@scout.wisc.edu) 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.
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ATE Central Connection is published by Internet Scout via support from the National Science Foundation under grant number 0435310. |  |