In a Technology Education high school lab setting, I am experimenting with using computers and workstations to develop a knowledge-based project for students called "Modular Resource Areas"
This project will be called Modular Resource Areas for Technology Education and will consist of 12 Labs with a Modular Project Box and a Resource Computer in each lab.
The Modular Project Box or Boxes will employ project boxes near the workstation where students can make, bring, and develop materials and models that will help the "module user" to gain new knowledge or add to and synthesize that which is already known. The project box will provide a hands-on link and will employ psychomotor skills to serve in this knowledge-based project. It will also apeal to and help those with different learning styles perform well. It will also serve as stepping stones to larger Project Based Learning projects, and Lab Performance projects. North Carolina now requires that a student complete a graduation project and this project can go in the student's class portfolio and help to give them an example of a service type of project that is informs and educates others.
Students will do a textbook and syllabus/blueprint research project to gain an understanding of the several different elements that make up technologies and technological systems which are to be studied. This will result in an initial Tech Ed bibliography of their subject matter which can be added to later by them or by other students.
Other Feature(s):
- Multiple learning projects could be operating at one station
- It will be employed in the learning environment of a North Carolina, high school, Fundamentals of Technology Class
They will develop this project as a service project for their own class, their sister classes and for those who will follow them. Other classes will have the opportunity to add on to this project.
Teacher Research and Reflections
It would be good for me as a teacher to research the literature that is out there regarding this project and a project that has been, or is being done, similiarly to this project. I have done extensive research in a middle school setting when I set-up a new modular technology lab and built it from scratch through a grant and with the permission of Wake County and the CTE program. Modular labs have some problems because they are a juggling act, however I think that the creativity and the design element in this project will allow them to create a RESOURCE lab that will not be the focal of the class but will augment their learning because it gives them a learning product.
The many products that come from this project should be posted on this blog and a school blog as permitted, and be available to other schools in their work as possible
If you have any such information on this project and my ideas then please send that research to me.
Thanks.
Dean White
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