Courses of Study : Career Tech: Career Cluster Electives

•  Determining effects of goal-directed research and commercialization on the diffusion of technology into society

•  Explaining how inventions and innovations are the result of specific, goal-directed research

•  Explaining how the development of technologies is driven by the motivation for profit and by demands of the market

•  Interpreting systems as building blocks of technology embedded in larger technological, social, and environmental systems

•  Explaining how the stability of a technological system is influenced by all components in a system, especially those in the feedback loop

•  Explaining how the selection of resources involves trade-offs between competing values such as availability, cost, desirability, and waste

•  Describing how new technologies create new processes

•  Explaining the measure and effect of quality control

•  Explaining the processes of planning, organizing, and control in work management

•  Classifying layers of control and feedback loops used to provide information in complex systems

•  Explaining how technology expands when an existing application is used for a different function

•  Describing how technological innovation occurs when ideas, knowledge, or skills are shared within a technology, among technologies, or across other fields

•  Justifying the use of knowledge protection, including the patent process

•  Recognizing that technological progress promotes the advancement of science and mathematics

•  Explaining how changes caused by the use of technology can range from gradual to rapid and from subtle to obvious

•  Describing how making decisions regarding the use of technology involves comparing positive and negative effects of trade-offs

•  Describing ethical considerations involved in the development, selection, and use of technologies

•  Explaining how the transfer of a technology from one society to another can cause cultural, social, economic, and political changes affecting both societies

•  Describing how technologies are devised to conserve water, soil, and energy

Examples: reusing, reducing, recycling

•  Illustrating how new technologies reduce the use of nonrenewable resources

•  Illustrating how most technological development has been the result of a series of refinements to a basic invention

•  Describing how the evolution of civilization has been directly affected by, and has in turn affected, the development and use of tools and materials

•  Explaining the relationship of technological know-how and scientific knowledge in the early history of technology

•  Describing how the development of many technological devices has produced long-lasting effects on technology and society through various historical ages including the Iron Age, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Information Age

•  Identifying how different cultures develop technologies to satisfy individual and shared needs, wants, and values

•  Describing how the decision to develop a technology is influenced by corporate cultures, societal opinions, and demands

•  Explaining how different factors contribute to the design of and demand for various technologies

Examples: advertising, strength of economy, corporate goals of the company

•  Explaining why design problems are seldom presented in a clearly defined form

•  Explaining the process of refining and improving a design

•  Explaining how requirements of a design compete with each other

Examples: criteria, constraints, efficiency

•  Summarizing how established design principles are used to evaluate existing designs, collect data, and guide the design process

•  Explaining how engineering design is influenced by personal characteristics, including creativity, resourcefulness, and the ability to visualize and think abstractly

•  Demonstrating how a prototype of a working model is used to test a design concept by making actual observations and necessary adjustments

•  Explaining the process of engineering design, including factors involved in the process

•  Describing the nature of research and development in business and industry

•  Explaining why technological problems must be researched before they can be solved

•  Explaining why all problems are not technological and why every problem cannot be solved using technology

•  Explaining why many technological problems require a multidisciplinary approach

•  Specifying criteria and constraints for the design

•  Using two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations of the design solution

•  Explaining how testing and evaluation of the design in relation to preestablished requirements are parts of the design process

•  Developing a product or system with accompanying documentation

•  Summarizing processes and procedures for communication to different audiences using appropriate oral and written techniques

•  Diagnosing a malfunctioning system using tools, materials, machines, and knowledge

•  Explaining why it is necessary to troubleshoot, analyze, and maintain systems to ensure precision and safe and proper function

•  Arranging operation systems to function according to design

•  Explaining why using computers, calculators, and data collection devices to access, retrieve, organize, process, maintain, interpret, and evaluate data and information for communication is important for system maintenance

•  Collecting information to evaluate quality

•  Synthesizing data to analyze trends and draw conclusions regarding the effect of technology on the individual, society, and the environment

•  Describing the use of assessment techniques to make decisions about the future development of technology

Examples: techniques—trend analysis, experimentation

•  Describing how medical technologies of prevention and rehabilitation, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, medical and surgical procedures, and genetic engineering are systems by which health is protected and maintained

•  Describing how telemedicine reflects the convergence of technological advances in the fields of medicine, telecommunication, virtual presence, computer engineering, informatics, artificial intelligence, robotics, materials science, and perceptual psychology health care

•  Describing how the sciences of biochemistry and molecular biology have made it possible to manipulate genetic information found in living creatures

•  Describing how agriculture includes a combination of businesses used to produce, process, and distribute food, fiber, fuel, chemical, and other useful products

•  Explaining how biotechnology has applications in the areas of agriculture, food and beverages, drugs and medicine, energy, the environment, and genetic engineering

•  Identifying components of conservation

Examples: controlling soil erosion, reducing sediment in waterways, conserving water

•  Explaining why engineering design and management of agricultural systems require knowledge of artificial ecosystems and effects of technological development on flora and fauna

•  Explaining the law of conservation of energy

•  Classifying the major forms of energy, including thermal, radiant, electrical, mechanical, chemical, and nuclear

•  Describing the second law of thermodynamics

•  Distinguishing renewable and nonrenewable forms of energy

•  Identifying required components of a power system

•  Illustrating ways communication systems transfer information, including human to human, machine to human, human to machine, and machine to machine

•  Describing purposes and common uses of communication systems

Examples: informing, persuading, controlling, managing, educating

•  Explaining the operation of typical communication system components, including source, encoder, transmitter, receiver, storage, decoder, and destination

•  Demonstrating graphic and electronic means of communications

•  Analyzing elements of common language, including symbols, measurements, conventions, icons, graphic images, and languages for the purpose of promoting clear communications

•  Explaining the relationship of transportation to the effective operation of other technologies

•  Describing the nature of designing intermodalism

•  Analyzing the design of intelligent and non-intelligent transportation systems to determine dependence on other processes and to effectively operate a system

•  Describing various service processes used to maintain product condition, including installing, troubleshooting, recalling, maintaining, repairing, altering, upgrading, and retrofitting

•  Classifying materials as natural, synthetic, or mixed

•  Distinguishing between durable and nondurable goods

•  Comparing types of manufacturing systems, including customized production, batch production, and continuous production

•  Explaining how interchangeability of parts and international standards increase the effectiveness of manufacturing processes

•  Analyzing chemical technologies to determine their use in manufacturing

•  Describing essentials of marketing a product, including establishing product identity, conducting research on product potential and advertising, product distribution, and product sales

•  Identifying the role of construction technologies in creating infrastructure as the underlying base of a system

•  Explaining how structures are constructed using a variety of processes and procedures

•  Explaining constraints normally associated with construction technologies, including function, appearance, strength, maintenance, available utilities, building codes, safety, style, convenience, and efficiency

•  Describing why ease of maintenance, alteration, and renovation are considerations when designing a structure

•  Selecting prefabricated materials for a given project

•  Illustrating how pathways lead students through secondary and postsecondary education leading to a credential

•  Identifying employment opportunities associated with the clusters

•  Applying employment skills for securing and retaining a job