By Hubert Ham, Director of Innovation & IT, The Alexander Dawson School (NV) and The Esports EDU Lab
As an administrator, when was the last time you considered the state of your technology and engineering classes?
Take a look at your course catalog. Your school probably offers computer science, a coding elective, an engineering-type course, and some kind of catch-all digital literacy class. Have you ever wondered why every school has courses similar to yours? Have you considered how to differentiate your electives from everyone else? Have you taken time within the last five years to evaluate whether or not they are what’s best for student learning? Are they even relevant anymore? There is a chance that they may not be. However, the lingering question remains, why do these classes remain the mainstay of many schools?
They’re Easy and Popular
These programs are easy to launch with many curriculums already written, and there is a cohort of teachers out there who all teach them. As an organization, it’s easy to keep these classes churning over the years, even with turnover, since you can simply list a job opening, hire a competent teacher with previous experience, and keep the big machine that is your school running.
You may…