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Archive for the ‘Career Exploration’ Category

Jun
03

The Achieve Texas in Action Best Practices Guide has been released.  (Click here to download –7 megabytes).

The guide collects some of the best of what Texas educators are doing to implement AchieveTexas, the state’s college and career initiative. This booklet is organized around the eight steps featured in the AchieveTexas Implementation Guide. Using a color-coded map, readers can find specific examples of Texas school districts that have implemented the eight steps.

The goal of the booklet is to provide educators and other AchieveTexas  stakeholders around the state with step-specific, real-world examples of what their colleagues are doing to fulfill each step by featuring perspectives from students, counselors, and community partners.

The core of AchieveTexas is the 16 career clusters (see back cover) that are divided into 122 programs of study. The programs of study provide a model of the courses and extended learning opportunities that secondary students should experience in order to prepare for more education or employment in a specific career. This guide is designed to spread the word about what schools are doing in implementing AchieveTexas, so that these best practices can spread across the state.

Suzanne Haley, Health Science Technology Teacher at Vidor High School is featured on Page 38 of the manual.  The article features the collaborative the Vidor High has with Oak Manor nursing home.

“The facility welcomes dozens of high school seniors throughout the school to assist in residents’ daily care. Such activities include everything from helping seniors get up and down out of chairs to assisting them when they brush their teeth. The program has been a part of the VHS Career and Technical Education (CTE) program for 16 years and was a natural fit for the school’s AchieveTexas initiative,” the article  points out.

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May
25

Trajectory of Oil Spill on May 6
Oil Slick Trajectory May 6
CC BY-SA 2.0

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico offers a great opportunity to see technology, biology, environmental protection and politics in action.

Here are some resources that you may find useful in making science, geography, mass communications or other topics relevant for your class -- all centered around this massive disaster.

Live Video of the spill from underwater.

New --the Dept of Energy posts schematics, drawing and well pressure data of the BP Oil Spill

What is it like to live and work on a massive drilling rig?

The National Park service has set up this site about the work being done to protect national parks along the Gulf Coast.

Recent video explaining all the oil spill stop options that BP is working on.

The physics of the oil spill (MSNBC)


The National Shoreline Web site from NOAA

DeepwaterHorizon Response.com
The Joint Federal web site is loaded with resources. In addition to photographs,maps and data, it has links to social media. How about following the disaster on Twitter?  Or Facebook:

The Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant Programs Citizens Advice and Information Page full of pertinent information including state by state sources.

GOM Coastal Ocean Observing System
Texas A & M site with observation data on the Gulf of Mexico.

Bathymetry of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) from     -- down load the file and double click it to load it into Google Earth.:

This page gives a Google Maps view of rigs and platforms in the Gulf of Mexico with links to the weather data they are are transmitting.

USA Today has a very well done map of the action surrounding the oil spill.

The New Orleans Times Picayune has an animated graphic of the oil spills movement   -- CNN has a similar graphic.

An Ole Miss department has posted this large photo and graphic of the oil spill forecast for May 4..  As well, they have published seafloor maps of the Mississippi Canyon block where the spill occurred.

What kind of information does the oil spill team use to decide where the oil will move toward and where to deploy resources:  see this page.

More video details on modifications that preceded the Top Kill attempt.

A fact sheet on the coffer dam that is being lowered to try to stop the oil.

The EPA has this site on environmental testing in the area of the spill (water, air and sediment sampling)

A mariner's view of the Gulf is on this nautical chart rendering over Google Maps

This next site has animation on drilling a well off the coast of Africa (not the Gulf of Mexico Spill, and by a different company, but it gives an idea of the complexity of drilling a mile deep under the ocean, and the tremendous amount of engineering and technology it takes.

PBS creates its own oil spill in a bowl and shows some of the techniques being used in the Gulf of Mexico spill.

What is the weather and sea condition in the Gulf of Mexico?  Here are buoy and platform observations via Google Earth.

These sites will lead you to a lot of information on the spill.

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