Hello and welcome back to kenbaxter.com! I am Ken Baxter and today is Thursday, December 5th, 2013. We, at Made in America, are very excited because today is our first appearance at the ACTE Career Tech Expo! This event is being held on December 5th and 6th, 2013 at Las Vegas Convention Center in sunny Las Vegas, NV, and hosts over two hundred exhibiting companies showcasing new products, tools, and technology for today’s career and technical education professionals. We are thrilled to be a part of this event, dear readers, so please read on to find out more!
ACTE, or the Association for Career and Technical Education, is the nation’s largest education non-profit association dedicated to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for successful technical careers. This organization was founded in 1926 and has more than 25,000 members which include educators, administrators, researchers, counselors, and many others involved in career and technical education programs. ACTE holds the Career Tech Expo once a year to increase public awareness and appreciation for career and technical programs. Participants are encouraged to network, learn from others, share their experience and knowledge, and take new learned techniques and insights back with them into the workforce. We are very excited to be a part of the wealth of knowledge available at this event!
Made in America, our non-profit organization, is exhibiting at this event to showcase our mission to support and strengthen the return and retention of American jobs in the manufacturing sector. Two of our initiatives, Teach the Teachers Manufacturing, and Students in Manufacturing, are particularly relevant to this event because the Career Tech Expo focuses on promoting manufacturing and technical education development for both teachers and students. Our mission and the goals of ACTE go hand in hand!
Our first program, Teach the Teachers Manufacturing, prioritizes expanding the career and technical academy programs of study, including special outreach programs, designed to “educate the educators” in elementary and middle schools toward the redefined rewards of manufacturing and promote the skill base and teaching tools necessary to empower high school facilitators and staff with the overall knowledge, curriculum, and technical equipment necessary to teach and train the manufacturing workforce of tomorrow.
Our second program, Students in Manufacturing, focuses on expanding career and technical academy programs of study and technical aptitude, including hands-on training with laboratory and technical manufacturing equipment. “Students in Manufacturing” is intended to reach high school students and prepare them for diverse manufacturing sector positions ranging from soft and hard skill sets for apprenticeship as well as career-oriented opportunity.
We are always striving to learn more about how to better assist technical educators and students in bringing their concerns and needs into the public eye, enhancing the value of manufacturing and educational programs relating to manufacturing careers, and increasing our ability to support these important manufacturing programs. We certainly look forward to many great things at this event and will be posting more very soon to let you know what we have learned!
If you are interested in attending ACTE’s event or simply want to know more about it, please visit ACTE’s Career Tech Expo website: https://www.acteonline.org/vision.
Ken Baxter, Las Vegas, NV
