Advanced Technological Education .

Welcome to the ATE Central Connection! Published the first Tuesday 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.

In This Issue

Featured Resources: Women in Technology

From Providing Opportunities for Women in Energy Related (POWER) Careers:

Providing Opportunities for Women in Energy Related (POWER) Careers Promotional Materials

atecentral.net/downloads/5105/Promotional+Materials.zip

This collection of promotional materials from Idaho State University provides information about the Providing Opportunities for Women in Energy Related Careers (POWER Careers) project at the Energy Systems Technology & Education Center (ESTEC) at Idaho State University. POWER Careers seeks to recruit women into ESTEC AAS degree programs and provide women students with additional mentorship and job placement support. This collection consists of three types of promotional materials: billboards, brochures, and fliers. The collection includes two billboards, from the years 2016 and 2017, respectively.

For a full description of the materials available, please visit the record.

From Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing:

Women in Manufacturing Educators Guide

issuu.com/cot-rcngm/docs/womeninmanufacturing

This educator resource, provided by the Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (RCNGM), contains information for women considering careers in manufacturing. "By exploring and preparing for careers in manufacturing, women can make a significant positive impact on America’s economy. Today’s clean, high-tech manufacturing environment offers a wide range of employment opportunities for women. Jobs are rewarding and increasingly dependent on technical, professional, and interpersonal skills as well as a solid foundation in science, math, and English."

This resource includes the following sections: Women Making an Impact in Manufacturing, Recruiting and Retaining Women in Manufacturing, Manufacturing - Then and Now, Meet Today's Women in Manufacturing, Understanding the Manufacturing Process, and Getting There - Your Career Path.

From ATE Central:

ATE Student Success Stories: Christina’s Story

atecentral.net/downloads/3844/Christina.mp4

In Texas City, Texas, Christina Smith is going back to school to study process technology at College of the Mainland. Learn more about Christina's new career path, her success in providing for her young daughter, and the role of ATE in helping her move forward. With an emphasis on two-year colleges, the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program focuses on the education of technicians for the high-technology fields that drive our nation's economy. The program involves partnerships between academic institutions and employers to promote improvement in the education of science and engineering technicians at the undergraduate and secondary school levels. The ATE program supports curriculum development; professional development of college faculty and secondary school teachers; career pathways to two-year colleges from secondary schools and from two-year colleges to four-year institutions; and other activities. Another goal is articulation between two-year and four-year programs for K-12 prospective teachers that focus on technological education. The program also invites proposals focusing on research to advance the knowledge base related to technician education.

Community Connection

ATE Central Seeks Projects to Feature in Next Edition of ATE Impacts Book

As the team at ATE Central ramps up to create the ATE Impacts 2020-2021 publication, it is asking the ATE community for nominations of projects with promising outcomes or interesting activities to spotlight.

Nominate your project or someone else's at https://www.research.net/r/ProjNom.

The book is a great opportunity to increase awareness of the innovations developed by principal investigators of Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects and centers and to promote technician education in general.

In addition to informing people who read the book, the dynamic photos and compelling data that projects and centers have provided for previous editions have often been re-purposed for other technician-education outreach.

The American Association of Community Colleges, a partner on the ATE Collaborative Outreach and Engagement (ACOE) project that includes the ATE Impacts book and blog, has used ATE Impact photos in its digital and print publications, website, and ATE Principal Investigators' Conference displays. The ACOE project has displayed large versions of ATE Impact photos at education and industry conventions. The National Science Foundation, which funds the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program and the ATE Impacts book and blog, has reprinted ATE Impact photos too.

Jim Pytel, principal investigator of the Flipped Classroom Resources for Electrical Engineering Technicians project, reports that being one of the 28 projects featured in ATE Impacts 2018-2019: 25 Year of Advancing Technological Education may have contributed to more people accessing his BigBadTech videos. From October 2018 to March 2019 the project’s YouTube channel with 600 instructional videos gained 5,000 subscribers for a total of 27,600 people.

To read more about Pytel and how being featured in ATE Impacts 2018-2019: 25 Years of Advancing Technological Education affected his work, check out the April 1, 2019 ATE Impact Blog post.

ATE Success Tips: Outreach

Dissemination Tips and Strategies

Well-structured outreach efforts are essential for attracting industry partners and prospective students, increasing institutional presence, and sharing the innovative work of the ATE program and its many hardworking projects and centers. In fact, for those in the ATE community, it’s also a requirement; NSF asks all ATE projects and centers to push out their work fully in order to illustrate the likely broader impacts of research, professional development, and classroom/lab successes. Yet, figuring out the best way to share this information isn’t always easy. Whether it’s a shortage of time, staff, or familiarity with communications best practices, managing outreach activities can be a difficult task.

When creating outreach and dissemination materials, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Begin early

  • Dissemination should be considered from the beginning of your project. Planning how the results of your efforts will be shared can help guide your project or center’s work. Some information may even be communicated before the entire project is completed (e.g. blog posts, newsletters, and social media posts may be sent out at various stages to generate interest and update the public on what’s happening.)

Write clearly and concisely

  • Clear, concise writing and effective communication are essential when attempting to convey the importance and significance of your project or center’s work to the broader community. When engaging with audiences beyond your direct peers or project/center staff, use declarative sentences. An “obvious” fact may not be clear or evident to those less familiar with your work.

Assess the range of media available to you

  • There is a wide variety of ways to share knowledge and the successes of your project or center’s work. Consider the media available to you, and select the best-fitting option. For instance, Facebook may be the easiest way to share out information, but a well-conceived press release or institutional interview may be much stronger tools for reaching the local community.

For more ideas on how to craft an outreach strategy, check out the Planning Guide in ATE Central’s Outreach Kit.

Did You Know?

The number of first-time degree earners age 25 and older is dropping, but the number of older learners with a previous credential who earn another degree is on the rise. Learn more by visiting DataPoints on the AACC website.

Select STEM Education Resources

A few online STEM resources from outside of ATE, that you may find of interest:

Women in Chemistry

www.sciencehistory.org/learn/women-in-chemistry

Marie Curie, famous for her two Nobel Prizes and her work with radioactive elements, may be one of the most prominent women in the history of chemistry but many other women have also made significant contributions to this field. Here, readers will find nine videos created by the Science History Institute (formerly the Chemical Heritage Foundation) celebrating the contributions of eight of these women chemists. The first video, produced in partnership with WHYY Philadelphia for broadcast in 2013, is an hour-long television documentary showcasing the accomplishments of all eight women. Readers curious to learn more about any of these individuals should check out the remaining eight videos, which comprise a series of 15-minute films that each highlight one of the women and include a brief text description of her background and career. Examples include Stephanie Kwolek, who invented the Kevlar material used in body armor and Paula Hammond, a Professor of Engineering at MIT who researches nanotechnology.

The Physics Classroom: Physics Interactives

www.physicsclassroom.com/Physics-Interactives

Introductory physics students and teachers may appreciate this extensive collection of Physics Interactives available on the well-known website The Physics Classroom. This resource features well over fifty interactive simulations, exercises, and games to help users explore and understand different physics concepts. The interactives are organized by topics such as momentum and collisions; circular motion and gravitation; static electricity; and waves and sound, with most topics containing multiple interactives. Many of the interactives also include a notes page containing teaching ideas, suggestions, and links to related resources (including some classroom-ready printable pages) from other sections of The Physics Classroom to complement the lessons imparted by the interactive. Created using HTML5, the Physics Interactives collection was launched in 2014 with the intent of producing a group of interactive, scalable resources that will work equally well on smartphones, tablets, and Chromebooks in addition to computers.

Isotopes Matter

www.isotopesmatter.com

The periodic table of elements is a familiar image for anyone who has spent time in a chemistry classroom, but despite all the information packed into those classic wall posters students today need to understand more than just the elements. This is the inspiration behind Isotopes Matter, a set of interactive educational resources from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Visitors to Isotopes Matter will find a colorful interactive periodic table where clicking on each element brings up information on its isotopes, highlights a current use of that element, and links to a PDF with further isotopic information. In addition to this, Isotopes Matter also provides a set of peer-reviewed educational resources about isotopes and their atomic weights, which may be helpful for chemistry learners and teachers alike. Launched in 2016, these resources were created to accompany the IUPAC Isotopic Periodic Table and "designed to communicate the importance of isotopes and their diverse applications, while helping students and educators understand why atomic weight intervals have been introduced for some elements and how they should be used."

Do you have some great STEM resources you'd like to share with ATE Central? Email us with your ideas at info@atecentral.net.

ATE Events

Upcoming Events
Eng 2019 CAAT Conference Warren, MI
– Ag/Env 6th Annual - Inside Missouri Cooperage - MO Lebanon, Missouri
– Info Second Annual Symposium for Supply Chain Automation Chicago, IL
Gen Writing in the Disciplines Workshop at Florida State College Jacksonville, FL
– Ag/Env Wine Sensory Analysis Workshop Mitchell, South Dakota
– Gen The National Summit for Educational Equity Arlington, VA
Gen Tips and Tricks: Step by Step NSF ATE Proposal Forms Preparation Online
Bio/Chem Health Care & Biological Sciences Mini-Symposium: From Education to Employment Sylmar, CA
– Gen 2019 International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence Austin, TX
– Info 12th Annual GeoEd Conference Louisville, KY
– Eng Laser Materials Processing Workshop Ottumwa, IA
Eng RCNET Meeting in Conjunction with Decommissioning Strategy Forum Nashville, TN
– Ag/Env Summer Energy Educator Series (SEES) Eugene, Oregon
– Info NGTC Workshops: Introduction to ArcGIS Pro Newark, DE

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 submit them online.

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

News & Reminders

At HI-TEC 2019: Entrepreneurial Approaches to Sustaining and Scaling Educational Innovations Workshop

This workshop, which will be held at HI-TEC this July, kicks off a two-week course that guides participants through the process of exploring innovative ways to solve problems that address the needs of your intended audience and/or market in the education sector.

This course is especially relevant to ATE PIs who are interested in learning how to sustain and scale educational innovations and network with education industry professionals. The kick-off workshop will be held at HI-TEC on July 22 with all subsequent courses held online throughout August 2019.

Those who participate in the course will learn how to explore project opportunities beyond federal funding, work through ideas while receiving direct feedback from instructors, and learn how to effectively network with the ATE community, among many other benefits.

For more information about the workshop and to register, check out the workshop’s informational flier and visit the HI-TEC registration site.

2019 STEM For All Video Showcase: Innovations in STEM Education

Registration for the 2019 showcase has opened! Registration to present will end on February 19 (or earlier if the showcase receives more than 250 registrations). Once approved, presenters can submit their videos between March 13 and April 23.

The STEM For All Video Showcase is an interactive, online event that is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and features federally funded projects aimed at improving STEM or CS learning and teaching in formal or informal environments. The Showcase takes place online from May 13 - 20 and during the event, thousands of participants will view the videos, have discussions, and vote for their favorites.

To read more about the 2019 Showcase, visit the event's website and check out last year's video submissions.

Would you like copies of the ATE Impacts book?

Book orders and general inquiries about ATE Impacts 2018-2019: Twenty-Five Years of Advancing Technician Education can be emailed to info@ateimpacts.net.

Archiving your deliverables with ATE Central is now easier than ever!

Upload your curriculum, professional development materials, or other deliverables created with ATE funding directly to the ATE Central resource portal via the new archive submission form.

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. The latest version (CWIS 4.1.1) was released on and is available for download on the Scout site. Please email cwis@scout.wisc.edu if you have any questions or would like a quick tour of its features!

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