Articles

One of the great advantages of the WIRED initaitive comes in building new approaches to project-based learning in high schools. Here's an excellent example from Denver metro in biosciences:

A cutting-edge project designed to deliver hands-on training and equipment to Denver Metro high school teachers has come to a successful conclusion, and as a result, high school students throughout the region have had the opportunity to conduct more than 6,000 DNA-related experiments in the classroom during the 2007-08 school year.

Read more.

The project is designed to equip high school teachers and students with hands-on instruction in molecular biology and information about careers in Colorado’s bioscience industry.

The Community College of Aurora has launched this initiative and maintains a web site (Opening Minds to Bioscience) where you can learn more.

Here are two good article links around the topic of workforce transformation, one recent, the other slightly older (2003)

Engineering for a Changing World:

A Roadmap to the future of Engineering Practice, Research, and Education

2008, The Millennium Project

The University of Michigan (http://milproj.dc.umich.edu )

James J. Duderstadt

President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering

The University of Michigan

http://milproj.ummu.umich.edu/publications/EngFlex_report/download/EngFlex%20Report.pdf

ENSURING WORKFORCE SKILLS OF THE FUTURE

THE BIRTH TO WORK PIPELINE (2003)

By: Rick Stephens

President - Shared Services Group,

The Boeing Company, Bellevue, Washington

and

Elane V. Scott, Consultant to The Boeing Company

http://www.cpec.ca.gov/completereports/externaldocuments/birth_to_work_pipelinev50.pdf

The challenge of future workforce education is

more than ensuring the delivery of content driven

programs at the right time. There must be

students with the desire to participate. Available

data indicates there are enough students in the

pipeline and sufficient workers available to meet

the demands of the growing employment base.

Statistics such as academic performance and

career track selections, however, indicate that

they are not strongly interested in the fields

where there is a great demand and economic

opportunity. In fact, in some cases there is even a

decline in interest, in spite of greater promise for

income, especially among women and

minorities.

This raises the question of what else is impacting

their perspectives, attitudes and beliefs such that

they do not attend programs aimed at their long-term

prosperity and meeting industry needs?