CEDO 540 Week 1

STATISTICS!!!!! Oh how I love that word. NOT!!!!!!! Ok, well at least that would have been my reaction 5 years ago. Now that I've gotten in the "Real World", I've learned an extreme appreciation for the field of Statistics. I am very cognizant of the benefits of stats in the daily world and therefore am excited to revisit this subject.

I have always been good at math and have always been good at manipulating information to get what I want, so I would think that naturally I should be good at statistics and I do believe I am, however, it just has never really excited me. Tie it to something that I want, however, and that could be a whole different story. Three years ago after my first year at the Grove, I decided that the whole Drafting and Architectural program needed an entire makeover to become relevant. In order to complete this makeover I was in need of around $60,000 for hardware, software, and furniture upgrades. In order to get this money I new I was going to need to convince the board that this was relative and was indeed a necessity. In addition to this, I also knew that PLTW was going to be the boards idea of the way that was desired for us to go to get some of the funding for this. It became my task to present the figures I had researched to the board in a manner that would allow the board to see that first of all the change was without question necessary. My secondary objective was to convince the board that my way was better than the PLTW direction and thus we should do it my way, however, as a fallback option PLTW was still better than what we currently had.

To begin my presentation to the board, I compiled an overview of what we had and where I felt we needed to go as I firmly believe that without understanding the past you can never foresee the future. Once I had this accomplished I provided the board with a data set that demonstrated the demand for engineers in our society. In addition to the demand for engineers in our society, I also documented the amount of companies using 3D drafting software as well as the amount of universities teaching a form of 3D drafting software. Once I had established the need for us to go in the direction of teaching a STEM related curriculum, I had to identify why it was better for us to utilize my plan and not PLTW's STEM initiative. I achieved this by compiling a compare/contrast chart that documented the total costs of each in regards to the total funding received from PLTW to identify that my way was cheaper even after funding received. In addition to the monetary documentation, I also compared a pie chart documenting the amount of users using Pro E, Solidworks, and Inventor in the industry, higher education, and high schools. I showed that high schools use Inventor because that is what PLTW requires and that was the natural progression from AutoCad which had cornered that market a long time ago. I also documented that Pro E and Solidworks had all but eliminated a need for Inventor in the industry a long time ago which showed the relevancy for us being forward thinking and teaching to the industry rather than following other schools into a dark hole.

What came out of all these statistics that I put in front of the board. Well, I got my way first of all. We received $62,000 in funding to put in all new Workstation computers with updated graphics cards, new tables, new high def projector and all new software. In addition, I received a workstation laptop to be able to work from both home and school with all standalone software and money to put into prototyping materials. I did not have to go through the PLTW training and most importantly do not have to teach a standardized curriculum to meet the demands of PLTW and instead can produce a curriculum that is individualized to my students and our community. The results have paid off as over the last 3 years I have sent 23 students on to college for Architecture or Engineering and have increased my class sizes to the point where now the administration wants to add 6 more computers to my classroom so they can fit more kids in here. I was hired to grow the program and the statistics helped me accomplish that goal.

I am really looking forward to gaining a better grasp on exactly how to clean up my statistics and present them in a more alluring and aesthetic fashion so as to enhance the power of my statistics and make my efforts more efficient and relevant and this time around may actually stay awake long enough to learn something from our education as I see correlation now for why I need to know this stuff.