Innovation Spaces

Career and Technical Education ("CTE") today is much more than the woodshop, agriculture, home economics, and welding classes of yesterday. Innovation-focused CTE spaces utilize the latest technologies and teaching practices to prepare students for the yet-to-be-invented careers of tomorrow.

What is CTE? CTE provides students with the academic and technical skills, knowledge, and training necessary to succeed in future careers.

What Innovative Career-relevant Learning Matters. Students who took 3 or more CTE courses were 21% more likely to graduate high school.

Elements of a Modern Computer Science Learning Space: Computational & design thinking resources, Digital media creation tools, 3D modeling & manufacturing devices, Coding & simulation software, High-performance computers

Career Technical Education: A Definition

Career Technical Education (CTE) is the teaching of specific career skills to students in middle school, high school, and post-secondary institutions.

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Why Career-Based Education Matters

This skills-based approach is different from the academics and theory-based approaches of traditional schooling.

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The Evolving History of CTE

CTE encompasses a wide range of activities intended to foster work readiness. But it is hardly a new trend.

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Career Ready Practices

Career Ready Practices are exactly that: practices that provide a solid foundation for students in their career preparedness.

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Innovation Spaces: Hardware Options

A modern Innovation Space requires robust hardware to truly train today’s students to thrive in tomorrow’s workforce.

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Innovation Spaces: Software Options

An Innovation Space needs to prepare students for an uncertain future with jobs that have not even conceived of yet.

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Keeping Innovation at the Center of Learning in K-12 Classrooms

Innovation focused career technology education spaces utilize the latest technologies to prepare students for the careers of tomorrow.

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Funding a Career-based Learning Space

The intent of modern Career Technical Education is to develop a student’s employability skills and set them on a pathway into a fulfilling 21st Century career.

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Career Technical Education and Esports

Esports is competitive, organized video gaming where competitors from different teams face off playing popular video games. These gamers are followed by millions of fans all over the world.

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Professional Development Resources for Educators

Professional development for educators is evolving from a “sitting in workshops for a prescribed amount of time” requirement to PD that is more job-embedded.

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Common Career Technical Core Standards

The Common Career Technical Core (CCTC) standards are a state-led initiative to establish a set of benchmark standards for Career Technical Education that states can voluntarily adopt.

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Adopt, Adapt and Improve: Metro Nashville Public Schools Redefines School Libraries

Tennessee's Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools is blazing trails in innovative library and media center design to bring true 21^st Century literacy to 83,000 students in more than 150 schools.

Rethinking the Library Media Center

Four library media specialists share stories about transforming libraries into next-generation resource centers that students and teachers love to visit.

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