The Communications Technology Studies class at Seminole Ridge is a groundbreaking Technology Studies course . The new lab facility at Seminole Ridge is an original, innovative, and highly sophisticated laboratory aimed at creating a true-to-life work environment for students. Listed below are a few of the features that make the Seminole Ridge Technology Lab one of the most innovative and challenging state-of-the-art facilities in the world.
Scenario Based Education
Scenario-Based Education is the answer for Technology Education. Students are placed in a simulated work environment and assigned roles within the organization as needed to accomplish the tasks required by management. Students receive memos from management that place them in true-to-life work experiences. Instead of being students at school completing projects for grades, the students act as employees for a company, completing projects for their salary and bonuses. At HawksPress, Inc., employees are expected to use the design process to complete their activities. It is the responsibility of each employee to do the research not only to find the necessary answers, but also to research what the necessary questions are to ask. Employees complete their projects using the design process and submit a detailed portfolio on their research and accomplishments. Our clientele have come to expect a 5-day turnaround time on orders, and we always deliver our product on time.
To summarize the curriculum in educational speak, the students are given an interdisciplinary, scenario-based project (examples) that relates to a specific technical career. Students are given 5 days to complete the project and they have another day to document their work in a portfolio format. The portfolios contain research notes, brainstorm sketches, rough drafts, the final project, and a report that follows a generic rubric that is used for all projects. The projects are open ended in the sense that the students are given very few limitations and specifications, they are free to be as creative as they choose within the prescribed limits given in the scenario memo. There is no curriculum in the traditional sense of the word. Students are given the same resources that they would find in the workplace; In-house training, store-bought books, and inspiration and reference materials. They use the included operator’s manuals for the equipment or software, the Internet, commercially available books and reference manuals, and their peers who have already completed the assignments they are working on. The projects are academically rigorous, include math, science, English, and reading components and include multiple assessment methods (project, report, rubric, presentation, etc.).
Innovative Delivery
There are no textbooks in our lab. There are 36 computers in the lab, one for each student. The curriculum, textbooks, instruction and lab news are all delivered through this interactive website. Students go to the Scenarios section of the site and retrieve their project brief and specifications. From that site, they can also link to the Project Links page and view web sites that relate to their project (sites are added as students find new sites that were helpful for their project.) Or use search engines and books in the lab library for research. This web page replaces the curriculum binders in most labs. True research replaces the step-by-step instruction found in most Technology Education curricula.
State-Of-The-Art Facility
The facility itself was custom-designed to the exacting specifications of the school administration, county-level specialists, and the incoming teacher. The purpose of the design was to create a high tech look that the students would want to work in. As one administrator put it, “You never see a kid asleep in an arcade… so let’s make it look like an arcade.” The facility itself, the furniture, and the equipment to outfit the lab came to $250,000. This is actually $50,000 less than most of the labs in the county’s middle schools. We were able to design and build a unique and innovative custom lab for this price due to the lack of packaged curriculum, a heavy expense for most labs. We wanted not only to build our own program, but our own furniture and curriculum as well. It was a gamble that paid off. The lab is being used internationally as a model for Technology Education Labs of the future. The program is a success in every way- the students are engaged and learning, the teacher is able to offer a wide variety of options for the students, and the administration is seeing a program that doesn’t just meet the high standards of the school, but exceeds even the highest hopes for the program.