Rowan leading the way in K-12 engineering preparation
October 15, 2008"This is the only class I look forward to," is what physics and engineering teacher Gerald Votta often hears from his students at Williamstown High School.
Votta was the first to be certified as a "master teacher" in New Jersey through Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a not-for-profit organization that designs pre-engineering curriculum for K-12 students, and his students benefit from his training. The classes students say they enjoy so much explore topics such as engineering, aeronautics, and other areas of math and science that involve hands-on, activities-based projects.
The goal of PLTW is to promote students' interest in the field of engineering by making math and science relevant and applicable to everyday life, according to PLTW literature.
Teachers may apply to become master teachers through PLTW, provided they come from a PLTW-certified school, take a required course and demonstrate a level of innovation in the classroom. It typically takes two years to become a certified master teacher. During their first year of enrollment, teachers become apprentices, working under master teachers who run the courses.
Rowan University has been the state affiliate for the PLTW program in New Jersey since November 2006. Only one university in each state is designated to run the summer teaching institutes, and teachers across the country enroll in the program to learn the project-based curriculum and to implement it in their middle and high school classrooms. Nineteen teachers participated in the most recent summer training courses at Rowan, each of which is taught by two master teachers.
Votta said students respond positively to the curriculum because is it is project-based. The curriculum can also fit into a regular eight-period instructional day. Votta said he and his students this year worked on a game board counter, an electronic circuit board that simulates the action of a gaming die. The lights on the board flash randomly for a few seconds then stop with one to six of the lights lit. "Each student builds and keeps his or her own unit," he said.
Dr. Doug Cleary, the affiliate director of PLTW in New Jersey and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rowan, is confident in Rowan's stewardship of the program and its impact on education in New Jersey. "We've received very positive feedback from the participants," he said.
Cleary said students can choose to enroll in PLTW-based courses at the high school level like any other elective courses. "Instead of a CAD [computer aided design] course, for instance, they might have a PLTW course," he said. "At the middle-school level most schools build it into a part of their math or science curriculum."
Although there is a cost associated with teaching the PLTW curriculum in K-12 classrooms, it is slightly less than that of other technology education programs. As a 501 (c)3 not-for-profit organization, PLTW provides the curriculum free of charge to public schools. The schools must provide equipment and software.
"Most programs like this do have a cost," Carolyn Helm, the PLTW Director of Program Quality who is based in Atlanta, said.
"The same applies for other professions. If you are a car mechanic, you need to pay for those tools... you can't do hands-on projects without equipment. But if you compare Project Lead the Way with the cost of similar programs of technology education, we're probably quite a bit less."
Helm said she is pleased with Rowan's leadership in the PLTW program in New Jersey. "I've been working with New Jersey for several years, and I can say that Rowan is doing a very good job so far," she said. "Rowan is concerned about the quality of education in schools, and the staff have met the criteria" as the designated school in New Jersey to run the program.
For more information about PLTW, contact Cleary at cleary@rowan.edu, or visit Rowan's website at http://www.rowan.edu/open/colleges/engineering/pltw or Project Lead the Way's website at http://www.pltw.org.
