Running Head: Future City Engineering Competition

SED 464 Signature Assignment

Instructor Bartlett
Grant for Teacher Technology and Software Classes
Richard Williams
Future City Engineering Competition

Future City Engineering Competition

Learning Goals and Outcomes:

For teachers during the last 20 years, educators have experienced advances
at light speed in the area of educational technology. Some find it difficult to catch
up, keep up, and put up with fast-moving computer-based technology. Not since the
introduction of the blackboard has a piece of equipment make such a difference in
how students learn. Today, not only are there computers in every classroom, but
teachers also have laptops, wireless laptops, and tablet PCs. In addition, teachers
have the World Wide Web, scanners, CD burners, USB drives, digital cameras and
digital video cameras, PDAs, as well as video and DVD players. And most educators
use a variety of tools-including video, e-mail, desktop conferencing, online programs
such as WebCT and Blackboard, as well as video conferencing-to teach. Thus, it is
no longer acceptable for educators to be technology illiterate. Educators must
continue to strive for excellence in their work as computer and associated
technologies continue to change and evolve. Today that includes continued time
and effort to maintain and improve their technology skills (as much as some
educators do not want to admit). The need for continued technological education
for teachers has to be a priority. The following standards have to be met for this
project.
For students this project hits many of standards across all the academic
disciplines in the 7th and 8th grade state standards lists to some degree. The focus
will be on the standards from ELA and social studies, specifically the 7 th graders, for
the purposes of this proposal. All eight performance objectives within concept one
of social studiesresearch skills for historywill come naturally during the research
phase of the project and during the construction of the simulated city. The Sim City
program provides long term charts, graphs, and data to track city statistics over

Future City Engineering Competition

time, which teachers will integrate into the essay and the speech. The project will
also help to build a framework from the following concepts as the relationship
between the city and other research done for the project and the connection
between industry, jobs, resources, pollution, and immigration/growth of populations.
The students will rely heavily on their ability to determine key ideas and details from
informational texts and determining the meaning of words from technical and
scientific research.