IT Education
Strategies and Activities to Increase Diversity and Improve Enrollment
Regular blog readers know that the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC) is currently steering a pilot program called the “Diversity Summit.” The program kicked off in February with a workshop for select schools from the Convergence College Network (CCN) community of practice. Each participating school sent three attendees – an instructor, an advisor, and an…
Read MoreSecurity Skills Gap Continues
The National Convergence Technology Center’s (CTC) National Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT) has long emphasized the need for IT students to learn security skills. Indeed, the BILT urges that every class include instruction on security. Specifically, since 2015, the BILT has asked instructors to find relevant moments in IT curriculum to ask students “Is…
Read MoreWearable Market Continues to Expand
One of the largest growing markets in the “internet of things” is wearables. A recent Venture Beat article notes a sizable increase in wearables sales. It’s still a relatively small market, but for the second quarter of 2017, 26.3 million wearables were sold worldwide. The leader is the Chinese company Xiaomi, with Apple and Fitbit…
Read MoreTeaching the Internet of Things
Two faculty members associated with the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC) recently delivered a standing-room-only conference presentation on teaching the Internet of Things (“IoT”) to IT networking students. Brian Nelson (Lansing Community College) and Bill Saichek (Orange Coast College) spoke to attendees of the 2017 HI-TEC educator conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Here are…
Read MorePerspectives and Successes from IT Administrators
The National Convergence Technology Center (CTC) spends a lot of time working with IT faculty, whether through professional development events like Working Connections or through quarterly meetings with the 60 schools in the Convergence College Network (CCN) that features best practice sharing. But twice a year, the CTC allows administrators the opportunity to get more…
Read MoreCCN Impact on Students and Faculty
The National Convergence Technology had their annual National Visiting Committee meeting this past week and with that, we gathered the best impact reports from several of our Convergence College Network schools. Student Impacts One Clark State Community College student was employed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the Distributed Shared Resource Center (DSRC- Supercomputing…
Read MoreBILT (Part 1): Critical to Student Success
Having a business council working with colleges is not a new concept. However, the Convergence Technology Center’s approach puts business in a co-leadership role rather than just a business approval role. The approach is key to ensuring that the students educated/trained by our partner educational institutions are “workforce ready” to be hired by the businesses.…
Read MoreTale of the Thumbtack: Updating a Program Bulletin Board
Developing strategies to successfully recruit students is a key goal of the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC). The CTC staff recently rolled up their sleeves to tackle this problem head-on when we decided to update a bulletin board in a classroom hallway here at Collin College. The bulletin board is in a high-traffic area students…
Read More2014 Fall Conference Previews
It is a great privilege to be involved with so many different, high-quality conferences each year. The opportunities to share information, meet new people and have really great discussions on different topics relating to IT education, are some of the many reasons we participate in these events. This fall will be busy for us as…
Read MoreCross-border Collaboration
Just last week, our very own PI, Dr. Ann Beheler presented at a technology conference unlike any other she has presented at in the past. What was so special about this conference, you may ask? Well, this particular event happened to be in Banff, Alberta, Canada. The Cybera Cyber Summit 2014 was a two day…
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