September

It is the end of the recruitment season, your new students are on campus and they have all been properly welcomed and are finding their classes…...

…………..now it is time to start recruiting your students for next year!!

What are you doing to reach out to those students? If you have put together your plan for year round recruitment you would already know the answer to that question.

A few thoughts from our plan:

• Sit down and review your plan with the Enrollment Management Council. What recruitment and marketing strategies worked, what didn’t, what were our results and what can we change? Did you make use of Web 2.0?
  
• Does you campus have an Outdoor Classroom, time to start thinking about inviting elementary aged kids to campus and working with the local NRCS.
• Never to early to visit some 8th graders, Make it fun and excite them about career and technology education.
• Send freshmen students a personalized letter & email helping them plan for the upcoming year.
• What final things should Sophomores be doing in order to be prepared to enter the technology center, send them and their parents an email?
• Junior and Senior College Alliance Night including presentations and meeting with college partners.
  

What are you planning in September? Go to the Blog and let us know. If you want a copy of our year round recruitment plan, let us know and send us an email.

Happy Recruiting!

Cooperative Alliance Spotlight 2008

The 2008 Cooperative Alliance Spotlight is now online at YouTube!! Special thanks to Brian Bendele at Oklahoma Horizon for putting this together for us.

PhotoSynth

Just read about a new spatial photo organization system on the .eduGuru Blog called Microsoft Photosynth.

You can create an account, enter in some pictures and through the magic of Web 2.0 you are brought into a "virtual tour" of a campus, room or that special place that truly brings out the character of your campus.

It seems that there may be some bugs to work out, but what are your thoughts about technology center virtual tours? We have some 360 degree tours, could Photosynth be an application for all?

You can take a tour of OSU's Boone Pickens Stadium or here are some views from around Oklahoma

Can't wait to see which technology center is the first to develop a Synth.....

OK CareerTech YouTube Player

YouTube now allows you to make a video player for your specific YouTube channel. This player is for the account http://www.youtube.com/user/okcareertech

Please feel free to visit the player or ask for the code for inclusion on your website. Be sure to check it often for more videos.

Cooperative Alliance Spotlight

Last year, Oklahoma high school students in area technology centers had a very successful year with over 4,400 enrollments earning over 31,000 transcripted college credit hours.

This Sunday, August 24, Oklahoma Horizon will be showing the latest installment of our Cooperative Alliance Spotlights.

You can see when the Horizon show will play in your area at: http://www.okhorizon.com/

Here is last years video.....

GuidanceFest 2008

GuidanceFest is an opportunity to learn about the CareerTech System and where we are headed in the future. Speakers will talk about the impact of the programs to courses movement, how CareerTech aligns with Oklahoma’s Promise, and many more topics valuable to you as an education professional.

To learn more and to sign up for an event in your area, please go to http://www.okcareertech.org/techprep/guidancefest.htm

Pass this to your friends and co-workers. We look forward to seeing you there!!

New Blog -Testing

The CareerTech Blogosphere grows again!!

The testing division of CareerTech is putting together a new Blog. The Blog, entitled CareerTech Testing Center, will be your source for news and information related testing throughout the CareerTech System

You can visit the Blog here: http://careertechtesting.blogspot.com/

To see our complete list of CareerTech Blogs, visit http://www.okcareertech.org/techprep/links.htm

CareerTech 2.0

This morning I was told about a new social network site for career and technology educators.

http://careertech20.ning.com/

The site was created by Tine Steele from Tri County Technology Center. Not a lot of conversation yet, but go and sign up and see what your fellow CTE friends are doing around Oklahoma, I did!

Summer Conference Presentations

For those of you that made it to Summer Conference, or if you missed it and you want to catch up, here are some links that might help.

The Summer Conference Presentations for Tech Prep are posted here: http://www.okcareertech.org/techprep/presentations.htm

You can get the Guidance Division Summer Conference Presentation here: http://www.okcareertech.org/cac/Pages/guidance/SC2008/2008presentations.htm

In other news, the CAC Division has a new home on the www and you can go there here: http://www.okcareertech.org/cac/

Your Big Idea-Just Do It!

Sunday night the family and I braved the rain and went with church to the Cushing Aquatic Park for Family Fun Night. The Cushing Aquatic Park is not huge compared to major water parks, but the $1.5 million water oasis has all the essentials and offers a variety of activities for kids and adults alike. For the small ones you can head to the kiddy pool and slide down the frogs tongue, or you can head over to the main pool that features an incline pool, a couple of mini slides, and two multi-story water tubes-one full and one half tube.

Since we have kids that are 5 years old and don’t swim, we decided to stat out at the kiddy pool with the frog slide. That did not last long!! As my son watched the big kids go down the tubes, he started asking why he couldn’t do it.

At last, his aunt decided that she would take him up to the top of the tower, go down first and wait to catch him. Up the tower they went and down came his aunt. As she went down the tube my son eagerly awaited his turn atop the tower. Finally, the lifeguards said go and down the half tube a brave, excited 5 year old boy headed. No screams, no tears and just a huge smile as he came out the end into the waiting arms of his aunt. Back up they went to conquer the full tube!
What is stopping you from conquering your fears? Many times an idea or thought will pop into peoples heads and then they think of all the reasons why they can not implement it, who they should not share it with or why it will fail.

What is your big idea? Maybe you came to the Enrollment Management presentation at Summer Conference and have ideas you want to approach administration with like developing a plan for year round recruitment, but are afraid of bucking the status quo? Maybe you saw an ad during the Summer Olympics and you thought it could be applied to your technology center, but they have always done it this way? Perhaps you have been thinking about a strategy for retention and you need a few dollars to implement a new program, but don’t know who to ask? You have an idea. maybe the next great idea and you want to act on it, but you just don’t know how.

Just do it! Take the first step and share that idea with those around you and start heading up that ladder. If you stay at the bottom of the slide and don’t face your fears you might never know how much fun the ride can be.

Enrollment Management and the August Recruitment Plan

The CareerTech System just finished its annual Summer Conference in Oklahoma City and I was excited to see more presentations this year on recruitment and marketing.

For my presentation this year, I spoke on Enrollment Management in CTE. It went well and the point of the presentation was not to have an in depth conversation (those will come later), but to introduce the concepts behind enrollment management and I felt that it hit the mark.

Of course we also talked some about recruitment, but in a big picture sense. I introduced a recruitment plan that has been developed through reading Tech Prep grants, Guidance grants, TCTW grants and others, combined with my knowledge of higher-education practices and techniques.

Here are some ideas for August:

MEDIA
Success stories in newspapers and other publications

PRINCIPALS AND COUNSELORS
Send P/C newsletter with technology center highlights featuring success stories of local students
Utilize email to send periodic updates of school specific student success stories

8TH GRADE YEAR
Targeted mailing to parents

FRESHMAN YEAR
Conduct fall freshmen/sophomore visits in local high schools

SOPHOMORE YEAR
Personalized letter & email to high priority
Letter from Superintendent

JUNIOR YEAR
College Alliance night invitation mailed to parents and students

The "Recruitment Plan for Oklahoma Technology Centers" has more ideas and concepts for recruitment year round. Some asked about it after the presentation and if you will give me an email, we would love share it and to work with you, develop it further and help implement it throughout the system to help Oklahoma continue to grow.

I'll continue to talk about Enrollment Management here, I hope you'll come back. If you went to the presentation, let me know how I did, I hope that you learned at least one thing that you can implement on your campus.

go green oklahoma

The State of Oklahoma has recently published a Green website! Aimed at informing the public about Green efforts in state agencies, it has some interesting information on go green oklahoma.

According to the OK.gov online license renewals reduced paper consumption amongst state agencies by over 281,000 sheets of paper since January, 2007.

If you missed it, Francis Tuttle Technology Center has launched a Green Web site, Think Green, which talks about their efforts to be a little more Green.

Why don't you share how you or your technology center are helping to make Oklahoma a little more Green?