What is Technology Education?
Technology Education includes a variety of courses designed to teach creative and critical thinking, modeling and prototyping skills, measurement, analytical reasoning, design, troubleshooting, teamwork skills, and problem solving abilities.
Technology Education courses use tools, materials, and processes to design solutions to technological problems.
Technology Education classrooms and laboratories are active learning environments. Students engage in real-world design and problem solving activities. Students learn about the technological world while they research, design, develop, invent, innovate, experiment, troubleshoot, and solve real-world practical problems.
The ultimate goal of Technology Education is to produce technologically literate citizens. Citizens who can activity participate in our advanced technological society, and citizens who can design and solve problems to satisfy human needs and wants.
* Teaching students how to use computers, computer software, or computer applications is not technology education.
* Teaching students woodworking, metalworking, drafting, graphics, electronics, or CADD is not technology education.
* Teaching students website design, CO2 vehicle design, or bridges is not technology education.
Teaching these topics as a vehicle for teaching technological concepts or content is technology education. Technology educator do not just teach how to use tools, they teach how to use tools to solve problems. In a computer aided drafting class, students are not just leaning how to use the CADD software. Students are learning how to use the concepts of design to create solutions to technological problems with the CADD software.
The International Technology and Engineering Education Association states in the Standards for Technological Literacy, Content for the study of Technology (2000), "Because technology is fluid, teachers of technology spend less time on specific details and more on concepts and principles. The goal is to produce students with a conceptual understanding of technology and its place in society, who can thus grasp and evaluate new bits of technology that they may never seen before. (p. 4)
In the past, Industrial Arts focused more on the final product. Now, Technology Education focuses more on the concepts and processes necessary to achieve the final product.
Technological tools are constantly changing. The technological content, concepts, and skills necessary to design and solve problem seldom change. Even with all the changes, technologically literate students are able to perform and adapt.
