Technology Department Philosophy

Our curriculum is based on the International Technology Education Association’s Standards for Technological Literacy, which is an outline of benchmarks for a technology education program, which was composed by an international panel of educators, researchers, and scholars. According to these standards, the overarching goal of an exemplary technology education program is to provide students with an education to become technologically literate.

Our technology education program is based on applying technological knowledge and processes relevant to real world experiences using the latest tools, software, and methods. Common threads throughout the wide range of courses available within our technology education program includes working as a part of a team, as well and working independently to design, construct, and evaluate creative solutions to technological problems.

Our goal is for students to develop an understanding and competence in designing, producing and using technological products and systems and assessing the appropriateness of these technological actions. In short, this is the ability to use, manage, assess, and understand technology.

It is our goal to provide students with the education they need to:

Use technology appropriately, and not to be apprehensive about the changing technological world, but rather to see our technologies as tools which have the potential when used properly to improve our lives, as well as to better control the consequences of human activity on the whole of life on earth.

Manage their use of technology, and understand the role that technology plays in our lives. By learning to manage technology, students learn to take an active role in defining the ways that present and future technologies changes the way they live, and the ways that technologies will shape their society.

Assess the environmental, social, and philosophical consequences of current and emergent technologies. All technologies have both desirable and undesirable consequences, as well as foreseeable consequences, and those that come as a surprise. By learning to assess technologies by thinking critically about how a new product or technology will affect the world, students can make better decisions about what products they will use or support.

Understand that technology is a human product, and that as humans, we have a responsibility to not take the use of new technologies lightly. In order to make informed decisions about technology, we must not only understand how a technology works and its consequences, but we must also understand the limits of technology. By understanding and evaluating the role of technology in our lives, we can better use our technologies for constructive ends.

By becoming technologically literate, our students can make critical, educated, and responsible choices about technology, and those choices will in turn shape the society of tomorrow. Every day, new advancements in manufacturing, energy, medicine, transportation, and construction are being developed. Through technology education, students can learn the lifelong skills they need to remain current with our constantly changing designed world, and continue to make informed and responsible choices as the leaders and citizens of the future.