Voss Signs Tour: An Important Connection to the Real World

Nate B. Nadelen ~ Technology Education Teacher ~ Graduate Student SUNY OswegoOn Wednesday, February 16, 2011, about 18 individuals including student teachers and current/former teachers met in Manlius, NY to tour the Voss Sign Company. Opened in 1965, Voss Sign produces a wide range of stock and customs signs using a wide variety of materials and process. Our host and tour guide, Tom Tenerovicz explained to us that Voss Sign customers include: forestry professionals, land owners, state and federal government agencies, school districts, and the general public. Voss Signs specializes in custom signs and also has an inventory of over 250,000 signs available for direct purchase.

All Voss Signs are designed and manufactured in house using American materials and state-of-the-art technology and equipment. Voss Signs are typically produced from two main materials: plastic and 100% recycled aluminum. Plastic signs, in gauges from .024 to .125, are made of special high density polyethylene that has UV inhibitors for long term outdoor durability and colorfastness. Aluminum signs are available in .012 and .020-.080 gauges. The .012 gauge signs can be produced with an infinite number of background colors. The .020-.080 gauge signs come standard with a white baked enamel finish with special colors available upon request. Voss Signs’ other materials include self adhesive vinyls, corrugated plastics, magnets, and window/banner materials.

 Upon touring the 32,000 square foot facility it is easy to see that Voss Signs believes in lean manufacturing. From the moment that the phone rings in the sales department until the finished product leaves the shipping department, there is no expenditure of resources unless it is creating value for the end 

product and customer. Voss Signs’ headquarters and manufacturing facility is set up to produce the highest quality product in the shortest amount of time with attention to detail and customer satisfaction.   

With increasing total employment, Voss Signs is showing no “sign” of reduced growth in today’s troublesome economic times. In 2009, Voss Signs expanded by opening The Frame Shop at Voss Signs. The Frame Shop offers a growing list of capabilities that includes: custom mats and framing, artwork mounting, beveled mirrors, plaque mounting, and readymade frames and mats. In 2010, Voss Signs opened its first retail store in Liverpool, NY. The store provides customers with a one stop shop for custom signs, stock signs, sidewalk signs, sandblasted signs, color banners, trade show displays, vehicle graphics, magnets, and decals.

Industry tours offered through the Central New York Technology Education Association (CNYTEA) offer a great opportunity for future and current teachers. The tours offer individuals the opportunity to network with peers while viewing the application of today’s advanced technologies. Many of the conservations during and after the Voss sign tour were evidence of its importance. Conservations included ideas for classroom lessons, laboratory exercises, and student projects. Without periodic connections to real world applications such as the Voss Sign tour, teachers can lose the ability to provide meaningful learning experiences for their students. Do not become one of these teachers, please join CNYTEA at its next industry tour or professional development workshop!         

TechLab 2000 - Modular Technology

By Paul Malone
Retired technology education teacher
Liverpool CSD
TechLab2000 was one of the first canned programs designed to help deliver the new 7th & 8th grade Technology Education curriculum and syllabus adopted by the New York State Board of Regents in the late 1980’s. Activities were designed to help students learn concepts and achieve learning objectives as stated in the NYS syllabus. Students developed critical problem-solving skills, improved their ability to work in teams and understood how multiple 

disciplines could be integrated to explore, understand and resolve complex problems. Many other types of canned programs were soon developed and adopted after the introduction of this Creative Learning Systems' –TechLab 2000. Liverpool Central School District was able to win a NY State Legislator’s grant to help purchase a CLS program package thanks to the efforts of Tom LaClair and John Cooper. 

TechLab 2000 is an integrated system of furniture, hardware, software, curriculum, 

technology-based learning tools, resources and supplies. It consisted of a series of self- 

directed, modular activities for students to experiment and explore the world of technology. Some of the activities included model building with LEGOS and Capsela; structure building with Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity geodesic dome ideas; pneumatic and electric power systems. Computer related activities helped students learn how to communicate better in the new age of information: including desktop publishing, and CAD; These activities were designed to be completed on a unique island type laboratory system featuring modeling stations, computer consoles and energy/technology platforms. 

Most casual observers remarked how different and state-of-the-art the techlabs looked as students were all focused and busy on many multiple activities all at the same time! Teams of 2 students each completed these activities. Students and their required activities were tracked through a computer program. Students studied several types of activities with a variety of student partners. Advanced, synergistic activities required students with a variety of expertise and skill levels to problem solve a design challenge, and to develop a well thought out solution, and then present findings to the class. In the early 21st century, TechLab 2000 and it's curriculum easily aligned with State and National learning standards. 

2011 Sylvia Charp Award for Outstanding District Technology Program!

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2011 Sylvia Charp Award for District Innovation in Technology. Tell us about the unique or inventive technology programs your district has implemented and this year's award could be yours!


The Charp Award is presented annually by T.H.E. Journal and ISTE to recognize the best district-wide technology program in the country. The winning entry is chosen on the basis of consistent district commitment to excellence and overall success of the program.

To submit your district for this distinguished award, go to: 
http://www.1105info.com/t.do?id=6999844:25657126

The winning district will:
* Be honored at the ISTE 2011 Conference, June 26-29, 2011 in Philadelphia
* Receive $2,000 for travel and registration expenses to attend ISTE 2011
* Be recognized in both T.H.E. Journal and Learning and Leading with Technology

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2011

For more information or to submit your district for this distinguished award, go to: 
http://www.1105info.com/t.do?id=6999845:25657126

CTE Faces Biggest Funding Threat in Years-Call Legislators!

On February 11, the House Appropriations Committee introduced a new FY 2011 appropriations bill, H.R. 1. The legislation *completely eliminates funding* for the Perkins Tech Prep program for the 2011-2012 school year, makes an 8 percent reduction in overall Perkins funds, and makes drastic cuts across other education and workforce development programs.

If your state has merged Tech Prep with the Basic State Grant, you would lose a percentage of the Basic State Grant funds you receive. If your state still has a separate Tech Prep program, all funds for this program would be eliminated.

The is the worst threat to Perkins funding in years and requires all CTE stakeholders to take action!

Action Needed

1. CALL your Representative and Senators today and tell them the cut to Perkins will harm your students, community and the economy! Ask Members to OPPOSE H.R. 1! Call the Capitol Switch Board at 202-225-3121 (House) or 202-224-3121 (Senate) and ask to be connected to your Members' offices.
2. Use social media! Policymakers are using social media to engage with their constituents, and ACTE encourages you to do the same. ACTE has created a list of Twitter and Facebook accounts for every Member of Congress.
3. Forward information on this bill to business leaders, teachers, administrators, alumni, parents and anyone else who has a vested interest in CTE.
4. Get your local media involved.

Get talking points, social media contact lists for your legislators, and more athttp://www.acteonline.org/saveCTEfunding.aspx

Thank you in advance for taking action to save CTE! 

Summer Energy Institute & NEED

By Robert A. Jones 

Technology Education Teacher 

Kenney Middle School 

Hannibal School District 

There are approximately 500 middle school and high school teachers throughout 

New York State that have the privilege to attend the Summer Energy Institute held either 

at SUNY Oswego or Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES from 1974 to 2004.  Funding 

for the institute came from National Science Foundation, Niagara Mohawk Power 

Corporation, New York Power Authority and Entergy Corporation.  PrimarilyDr. Merlin 

Kleinbach, Dr. Roger Hinrichs, and Dr. Carlton Salvagin of SUNY Oswego coordinated 

the institute with several other educators helping throughout the years. 

The program was a mixture of hands-on projects, teamwork activities, lecture, 

demonstrations, field trips that all evolved around energy content.  Emphasis was always 

placed on how to integrate energy lessons and activities in to existing curriculum to help 

meet state and national requirement. Projects have included the design and testing of a 

model solar house, home energy audits, wind powered vehicles and building a device to 

boil water using the sun.

Energy is a topic that is constantly changing and evolving.  Some factors to 

consider are the political atmosphere, environmental impacts ofenergy sources, and the 

search and research for new energy technologies.  The Summer Energy Institute is no 

longer but in New York State there is a program that is similar. It is having a large impact 

on the future of energy in technology education curriculum in New York State and 

several other states. 

The program is the (NEED) National Energy Education Development project.  

The program has been around for 26 years, but New York State has only participated in 

the last two years training teachers. There are numerous modules that are linked to 

national standards k-12, they cover a large variety of energy topics, updated yearly, and 

are hands-on based. Funding for this project has been provided through (NYSERDA) 

New York State Energy Research and DevelopmentAuthority. Todd Rogers, a NEED 

trainer has been instrumental in training teachers throughout New York State. He is often 

seen at many of the technology education conferences.


This article is part of a series that Steve Poydock has been gathering and sending over to me for the blog. We will be posting them each week, however we are looking for more contributions. Please consider sending an article of 200-300 words describing your MST, STEM or other TechEd program which have used during the past 25 years.

Regents Exploring Mandate Relief ~ TIME FOR ACTION!

Truly we have a bleak economic picture across the state and there are various groups, including our new governor, calling for MANDATE RELIEF. There are supposedly106 Unfunded mandates piled on schools, so everyone is screaming for mandate relief.

The Board of Regents met yesterday and began discussions over mandate relief. NYS has a very stringent special education mandate and there is talk that NYS will consider falling back to the federal level, which has far less stringent requirements. Yes technology education was brought up and at least two regents raised important concerns.

Regent Tisch felt there are a number of concerning mixed messages flying around, with cutting instructional mandates (for the sake of saving money, etc…) and the important role tech. ed. plays in STEM and CTE, etc...

Regent Phillips brought up.......we'ren't we here 10 years ago (actually it was seven - 2004- with Mandate Relief) so why are we here again now? or something to that effect.  A more accurate report will be put together soon. The Regents did meet today (Tuesday).

NYSTEA is now engaging in a letter writing and outreach campaign with the Board of  Regents.

Today NYSTEA has far fewer resources to fight the good fight. NYSTEA Membership is at historic lows, which means our funding to act is at historic lows. How can every tech. ed. teacher help? If you haven't already joined you absolutely need to! You need to be counted as a member and your dues money will help NYSTEA in numerous take action capacities.

NYSTEA is an ALL VOLUNTEER group and we are the ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE for tech. ed. teachers and their programs with the Commissioner, the Board of Regents and NYS Legislators. This moment in time demands that we all join together to get our message across and convey the positive value of what technology education adds for student learning. For everyone of us the stakes could NOT be HIGHER!! We are at a cross road where tech ed. could be eliminated or it could be more strongly embraced at the MS and HS levels. Are we all ready to join the fight?

Charles H. Goodwin, DTE

N.Y.S. Technology Education Association

Chairperson-NYSTEA Advisory Council

12 Tudor Drive

Endicott, New York  13760-4332

Council # - 607-785-1680

Mobile #   - 484-885-0045

cgnystea@stny.rr.com

LEGO Mindstorms 6

 by Joey Pesce –Solvay Middle School(2006) SUNY Oswego (Present)

 LEGO Mindstorms was used in the Solvay School District for the past ten years. They can be used to teach a variety of topics-mechanical design and robot construction, real world programming, and artificial intelligence. These were inexpensive kits that allowed the students to become aware of how common robotics is used throughout their everyday lives. We started our activities by discussing robots in their everyday lives. A car wash that you drive through is a great example that the kids can identify with. We discussed at length how the devices, like the ATM machine, are robotically operated. 

With that as a starting point we then explored the robotic process using the LEGO’s. They are an easy platform to work with because the kids are familiar with the basic LEGO building blocks. They are very quick to construct and with so many of the students all having LEGO’s as one of their childhood toys it is something that they can do immediately and successfully. 

The yellow brick, the “brain” of the system, is the RCX-small computer that controls motors and interprets data from light, touch, and other sensors. These are the only items that they are not familiar with so we spent our time learning how to program the robot and use the sensors. 

The programming language is the same as the basic language that is used by NASA so it allows the students to feel like they are using something relevant from the “real world”. They become engineers that create robots to do certain sets of tasks without human intervention during the process. It teaches them higher level thinking skills and helps them work within parameters and set both long range and short range goals.

The students created their programs by dragging graphic “programmed blocks” into a certain sequence in a kind of flowchart setup. After they write a program they see how their robot responds to their programmed commands. This allows them to assess how effective they are in program design, and to relate how often they had to interfere to get it to work. 

My very first time using them was an immediate success not to mention how much the students couldn’t wait to get their hands on them for the next day and design another one. This was one of those “store bought” activities that a teacher didn’t need to spend endless hours of research to prepare for lessons, activities and such. They just needed to identify a problem that the kids needed to solve, create an introduction to the problem and then 

have them workin teams to solve that problem. 

The students learned about team building and many other life skills that industry and future employers need. With an investment of less than $1000 our school was able to have a robotics program literally as fast as the units were delivered. We were able to buy 5 kits and have enough for a class of 20. We designed, as a class, a common chassis that we were able to use in two separate classes and to share the RCX and sensors. LEGO’s Mindstorms was a great way to experience hands-on learning and to give a child a chance to use design principles and programming. 

Mindstorms disciplines the students by directing them to create descript and distinct goals that are easily evaluated as they are designing and engineering their robots. We also used the robots to compete with each other, working with scenarios that will allow them to problem solve and push themselves and their robots to their limits. The kits also allowed individual exploration in problem solving situations. Every kid, no matter their ability level, was able to have success in working with Lego’s kits. It was great ways to learn and have fun at the same time!


This article is part of a series that Steve Poydock has been gathering and sending over to me for the blog. We will be posting them each week, however we are looking for more contributions. Please consider sending an article of 200-300 words describing your MST, STEM or other TechEd program which have used during the past 25 years.

Update on Facilities Planning

I tracked down the info you were looking for from Greg Montague the current/retired Facilities Chair. Cheers, Bob Tufte ~ RTufte1@aol.com

1. New York State Education Department doesn't have "requirements", they have guidelines.  These guidelines are found in the NYSED Facilities Planning Guide for State Aid and they basically state that a technology room (Industrial Arts) should provide 75 sq. ft. per student with a maximum of 24 students.  This again is a guideline and the Facilities Guide is used for planning new construction and aid reimbursement.

2. NYSTEA recommends 100 sq ft per student and ITEEA recommends 125 sq ft per student.

What I did when I started on this committee was work with Mike Hacker and then Eric Suhr to compile the best of the recommendations.    Pennsylvania had some of the better guidelines.  The problem, as I mentioned before, is that all of these are all guidelines not regulations.  We have had issues where some technology classes grew to 35 students in a facility designed for 16 - 20 students.  A letter was sent via sign-receipt mail to the superintendent of that district notifying them of the recommendations and expressing concern for the safety of the students based upon the recomemnded guidelines.   It was basically implied that the letter would  evidence that they had been informed of the safety concern if anything should ever happened.  In both instances when this was done this the class sizes were reduced.

I am attaching a couple documents for you to see.

1. Our NYSTEA Facilities Guide
2. NYSED Facilities Planning Document

Project Lead The Way

 by Paul Mizer – C.W. Baker High School ~ Baldwinsville CSD

Project Lead The Way Inc. (PLTW) is a national program forming partnerships among Public Schools, Higher Education Institutions and the Private Sector to increase the quantity and quality of engineers and engineering technologists graduating from our education system. First developed in the 1980’s in the Shenendahoa school district, and adopted in CNY in 1998, PLTW is now offered in over 45 states and the District of Columbia. 

PLTW provides local, state and national organization for leadership and support, a model 

curriculum, teacher training and development through its affiliation with some of the nation’s leading colleges and universities, and a network of consultants throughout the country. PLTW has developed a four year sequence of courses which, when combined with college preparatory mathematics and science courses in high school, introduces students to the scope, rigor and discipline of engineering and engineering technology priorto entering college.

The courses are: 

 Introduction to Engineering Design 

 Digital Electronics 

 Principles of Engineering 

 Computer Integrated Manufacturing 

 Civil Engineering and Architecture 

 Engineering Design and Development 

A critical component of the Project Lead The Way program is its comprehensive teacher training 

model. The curriculum these teachers are required to teach utilizes cutting edge technology and 

software requiring specialized training. 

(Printed with permission from PLTW organization)

Consider submitting your school's article to share with our CNYTEA members.
Please send any article via e-mail to Steve Poydock
poydie2002@hotmail.com