http://www.cteonline.org/
Collective curriculum development integrated with academic standards
CTE Online was created as a regional program in the spring of 2004 to help teachers in California's Far North Consortium to connect their career and technical curriculum with academic standards. As educational policy has moved more towards a focus on quantifiable academic outcomes, specifically in the areas of mathematics and language arts, pressure has been put on schools to abandon their elective and alternative courses in favor of an increased workload in the four core academic areas. The CTE/ROP response to this has been to show how their existing curriculum addresses academic standards while teaching technical and occupational skills. The CTE Online Curriculum Organizer tool was created to make the process of connecting curriculum to academic standards less of a burden on teachers. While documenting their existing classroom activities and outlining the structure of their programs, teachers are presented with academic standards that are typically addressed through such activities. The result is a report of the work they do with students, presentable to administrators, with documentation of how core academic standards and high school exit exam preparation are supported.
In the years since its inception, CTE Online has expanded throughout the state of California and is now fully supported by the Department of Education for use by educators throughout the state. The Curriculum Organizer tool has been used to document over 5000 programs, from the unit and lesson level, all the way down to classroom activities and assessment. Although originally developed on the CoursePath system, in spring of 2010 the CTE Online tools were ported over to Cognoti for its superior usability, performance, and permissions structure. Teachers from all over California are now in the process of co-developing curriculum in many industry sectors, including Biotechnology, Agriscience and Architectural Design.
Technologies utilized: Cognoti, Flash Video, MS SQL Server