After ACTE 2010 Newsletter: It’s about time

Thank you for visiting us at the ACTE Annual Convention in Las Vegas last December. Like you, we had an enlightening experience and came back home with extra knowledge to put into practice. We have a personal policy to never spam our contacts and to never exceed four newsletters or announcements per year. We know your time is valuable so we will cut to the point.

In this newsletter you will find:
A Personal Message from Nai
Nai’s Interview by ACTE
ACTE iPad Winners Circle
Twitter Put to the Test at ACTE
KP Goes Online!

A Personal Message from Nai

Ida Fryhover and Molly Kyler

ACTE in Las Vegas was amazing! I’m so glad KP was able to sponsor the convention and help the ACTE Support Fund Auction this year. Auctioning off Chef Jeff alone raised over $700! Congratulations Molly Kyler and Ida Fryhover for making your donation and winning a dinner for two with Chef Jeff.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking in front of the audience at both general sessions. Speaking to 5,000 people was a nerve racking experience. This year’s conference represents a key point in my life with KP. A decade earlier, we launched our first digital curriculum and now we are launching KP Compass Online. We’ve accomplished many great things in such a short amount of time, and I’m proud of my talented and dedicated team for devoting themselves to the pursuit of furthering education through technology. I think back to my humble beginnings, the years eating ramen and corn dogs to survive, based on a belief that what we are doing will become something bigger in the end.

At ACTE we made a big splash, announcing the release of a few new products, showing off our home made booth designed by our very own graphics engineer, and I got a chance to speak to the business and marketing teachers about my life. We even tested a new way of raffling off prizes using technology! I hope you enjoyed the time you spent with us at the booth. I only wish I could have been there to greet each one of you.

Nai’s Interview by ACTE



Curious to hear a little about Nai’s story? ACTE interviewed Nai and published the podcast at the end of January. You can listen to him tell his story about starting a small business, entrepreneurship, and technology in the classroom. You can find it at ACTE’s Publications site at www.acteonline.org, read it in Techniques magazine or you can read the transcript.


ACTE iPad Winners Circle

Congratulations Debbie Fanning and Sherry Lober on winning the iPads.

Of all the gadgets I’ve owned, I’ve never been so fond of such a device. It changed how I interact with content and made it personal again. During the second half of 2010 we ran a promotion to win an iPad and it reached its peak at the ACTE conference with over 700 entries. Two lucky winners went home winning the iPad in Las Vegas. We would like to take a moment to highlight the winners here.

We tried a new way of conducting the raffle, a way that was more exciting than just drawing a ticket out of a bin. We decided to incorporate technology into this age old practice and throw a bit of fun into the process. We ran together an algorithm in the computer that took the names of all the entries. The system randomly assigned these names to three categories. The three categories were represented by practical devices in the form of a bag of scrabble tiles, dice, and a coin. The process was to select a letter, then roll the dice, then flip the coin to determine the winner. It is total chance. This was the first time this method of raffling has ever been done in the world. We learned from this experience and will attempt it again at a future conference.

Debbie Fanning

Winner #1 : Debbie Fanning, a FACS teacher in Scottsboro, AL. She plans on using the iPad with her Fashion and Interior Design, Child Services, and Foods and Nutrition courses. She has been a teacher for 11 years and serves as an FCCLA advisor. She entered teaching because she wanted a career that would make a difference to others. She is the AATFACS president and is an AACTE board member. Congratulations Debbie!

Sherry Lober

Winner #2: Sherry Lober, a high school teacher of 21 years. She team teaches Marketing Education at Albuquerque High School with her brother, Eric Strauss and is very passionate about teaching and developing future business leaders. “I'm always looking for the latest and greatest!!!” She plans on using the iPad in her marketing class to give them a different outlook on technology and marketing platforms. Congratulations Sherry!

Twitter Put to the Test at ACTE

During both general sessions at ACTE, Nai spoke about technology in education. He expounded on how he has devoted his entire adult life to integrating technology into education. A controversy erupted as to how old Nai is. During his speech, he challenged the conference attendees to guess his age, but they had to use technology to participate. The vehicle of choice was Twitter. Many teachers signed up for Twitter for the first time to participate in this contest, and KP received over 200 tweets with guesses ranging from 21 to 48 years old. Congratulations Chad Lindsley for coming closest. We were encouraged by the number of participants and first time tweeters during the conference.

KP Goes Online!

It’s official, KP Compass Online has launched. This new enhancement to our award winning curriculum now has a new way for teachers and students to interact. But it is more than just an online delivery system. KP Compass puts teachers in the driver’s seat of the curriculum so that they control the destination. Instead of the textbook dictating what they need to teach and in what order they teach it, they can choose their own path and deviate from it if need be. KP Compass allows teachers to use the standards KP has established or create their own unit plans and add their own materials. Once customized, they can select students to enroll in that plan and grant access to the course from anywhere there is internet! The students will then log in, review the material, and take a test for mastery of the subject. After the assessment, students are directed to review any material that they have not mastered and are then directed to retake that portion of the test.

The key to KP Compass is customizability. The intelligent system takes the content the teacher chooses and automatically formulates the lesson, the vocabulary and the test based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. It’s flexible, and there has never been an intelligent system like this, offline or online. We have even bigger plans with KP Compass. If you are interested or want to find out more, please contact us!

Sincerely,
Nai Wang
Founder and President
KP Education Systems
800-701-6323 x913

AACTE - Alabama Association for Career and Technical Educators

I just finished KP's first summer conference at the AACTE conference in Birmingham, AL. This kicks off a busy summer as we launch and promote our new products for the 2010-11 school year. Southern hospitality is embodied by all here in Alabama. Everyone I met is warm, approachable, and has a passion for exploring better ways to reach students. We made our first announcement of KP Food Science and KP Assessments here and it was overwhelmingly accepted.

Following the improvements to our Sous Chef 7, called the KP Curriculum Suite, the KP Assessments service represents a highly requested feature that enables students to access the curriculum online. KP Assessments also allows teachers to create custom lesson plans and tests for classes or individual students. Students can be assigned user IDs to log in from any computer in the high school or from home using the Internet to view the text, activities and videos. Additionally, the students can access their assignments from mobile devices, which are growing in popularity among students. Assessments at the end of each module, and digital reports of students’ results, enable teachers and students to keep track of progress consistently.

These new features are a result of KP's desire to promote individualized instruction and semi-automated assessments while maintaining a focused modular approach to education. With KP Assessments, teachers can create dynamic lessons for classes of varying levels, catering to advanced students as well as those with special needs. This technology also broadens the influence and scope of the course by allowing students to access their instructional materials from home, fostering parental involvement and better preparation for in-class lessons.

The teachers here in Alabama see the potential of what KP Assessments can offer for their students and are excited about implementing the new "homework" model. For example, reading activities and general comprehension of material can be assigned as homework, freeing up classroom time for more labs and hands-on tasks. Furthermore, many teachers here in Alabama (and around the country) are facing increased classroom sizes. They find that digital curriculum with at-home access will help them maintain a high-quality and relevant course.

Our other featured product, KP Food Science, was also well-received by Alabama educators. With a CORE heavy emphasis on science, math and labs, KP Food Science combines the rigor of chemistry with the enjoyment and practical application of foods, cooking, and nutrition. While KP Food Science is designed for a food science or food chemistry course at the high school level, many culinary arts teachers are incorporating it to help them qualify for CORE academics credit. With over 50 interactive demonstrations, this project-based curriculum will suit the needs of any one semester or year-long course.

ALACTE was a fantastic conference and a wonderful kick start to KP's summer promotions. We always love coming to Alabama and developing new relationships with CTE educators across the state. Based on the feedback, the teachers here continue to support KP's efforts to create new educational products and services. Alternatively, maybe they are just excited about our new summer promotion to give away free iPads to teachers that review our demonstration disk! It's hard to tell whether teachers were more motivated by our upgraded software or by our free hardware (perhaps it's a tie). Either way, I think we are on track for a great summer. Thanks Alabama! I look forward to seeing you next year.

Nai Wang
President
KP Education Systems

A New Role for CTE by Mary Horne, Editor in Chief

The Millennium Generation describes the students currently occupying middle and high school classrooms across the country--the ones that teachers repeatedly must ask to "unplug" and pay attention. This particular generation has been the subject of countless news articles highlighting their disappointing performance on international reading, math and science tests, raising doubts about their ability to compete in a world economy.

The struggle to reach the Millennium Generation is evident in the concentration of professional development courses focusing on methods of educating these high-tech students, many of whom have short attention spans and very little interest in their teachers' "antiquated" teaching practices. The ultimate goal of these seminars and inservices is to raise test scores and school ranking while attempting to prepare this generation for the adult world of work and citizenship. Are the students in the American public education system sufficiently acquiring literacy, numeracy, and technological skills to survive global competition? Will those who do not move on to higher education, as well as those who do, be prepared to meet demands of the 21st century work force? Educators in all fields feel the pressure, but more expectations are falling on career and technical education (CTE) teachers than ever before.

Two major players in improving education to meet the needs of 21st century learners are technology and CTE. According to Dr. Bill Daggett, founder and President of the International Center for Leadership in Education, "The changing American workplace is impacted by fast changing technologies. Leaders must prepare graduates for this rapidly changing world by instilling the concept of lifelong learning in a technological world." In order to motivate the Millennium Generation to appreciate lifelong learning and to adapt to ever changing educational and career demands, educators must utilize the technology that is such an integral part of their students' experience. Administrators are now expecting teachers to become proficient in technology they never had as students. CTE teachers today not only need to stay on top of the professional standards of their particular fields, but they also need to learn new technological skills, many of which their students have already mastered.

In addition to updating equipment and training staff to keep up with technology, schools are also challenged to make the core skills--reading, writing, science and math-- relevant to the students, to show them that their academic achievement is directly tied to the quality of life they will have after they leave school. CTE has been identified as the ideal setting for students to put literacy, numeracy, science/technology and critical thinking skills into meaningful practice. Dr. Daggett and staff at the International Center for Leadership in Education developed the Rigor/Relevance Framework™ , which incorporates the six cognitive levels of Bloom's Taxonomy with five levels of knowledge in action, to illustrate the ideal combination of high academic standards and real-world applications in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The Framework functions as a plan for instruction (either at the classroom, institution or community level) and the goal of this plan is for students to finish school with the ability to use the higher level thinking skills that are outlined in Bloom's Taxonomy in conjunction with knowledge of multiple disciplines (math, science, language) to create solutions to unpredictable problems and situations.

Although "Writing Across the Curriculum" and "Crosswalk to CORE" are not entirely new concepts in public education, Daggett's position is that merely reinforcing some core academic skills in the CTE classroom is not enough to prepare 21st century learners for the demands that they will face in the work force. "Career and technical education," argues Daggett, "must be seen as a primary deliverer of strong academic preparation." He proposes that schools need to restructure from a program in which core knowledge is taught in a vacuum, removed from practical applications, to an "applied academics program where vocational skills become the platform in which the academic skills are delivered." School improvement, according to Daggett, is not just a matter of raising standards, because rigor alone does not make students successful outside of the classroom. "Relevance makes rigor possible,” says Daggett. For the highest achievement, students must be able to apply the knowledge to situations they might actually encounter in their careers, rather than simply study the concepts detached from relevant contexts. While restructuring to fit the Rigor/Relevance Framework™ might not be in every school's near future, teachers can still use the basic principle of multidisciplinary knowledge in action as a guide to address the needs of their students in their curriculum and to prepare for the future. For Millennium Generation learners, and the generations that follow, career pathways are vehicles for relevance and rigor.

This new attention on career pathways might cause some anxiety for CTE teachers who are unsure of the many expectations that are being placed upon them; however, CTE educators and students benefit from this exciting shift in education that emphasizes application, rather than just acquisition, of knowledge. Courses that were once considered "elective" and of secondary importance to the core academics are now becoming center stage in 21st century learning. Students' interest in the professional field can be used as motivation to foster competence in the core skills--skills that are not separate from the profession, but are in fact integrated within it and necessary for students to achieve their highest potential. Many of these skills are reinforced (even if informally) in the CTE classroom anyway, but perhaps not enough. Taking a more holistic approach to education will be a challenge, but it is also a prime opportunity for educators to contribute in the development of a skilled, competitive, and adaptive American workforce.

"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."
Herbert Spencer, 19th century philosopher

Mary Horne

KP Sponsors Chef Jeff

KP Education Systems is proud to sponsor award-winning chef Jeff Henderson as keynote speaker at the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) 2009 Conference in Nashville. "Chef Jeff" Henderson is a best selling author and TV personality. His memoir, Cooked (2007), became a New York Times bestseller, and his reality show, "The Chef Jeff Project," in which he provides six at-risk youth an opportunity to train for a culinary career, airs on the Food Network.

Growing up in Southern California, Chef Jeff had his own experience as an at-risk youth . To escape poverty, he turned to drugs and was running a large-scale cocaine operation by the time he was 19. Although Henderson's drug operation was quite lucrative, it eventually led to his arrest and incarceration at age 24, and he spent almost a decade in federal prison. While in prison, he discovered his passion for cooking during kitchen duties, and determined to change his life. Once out of prison, he channeled the same intense ambition that had nearly ruined his life into the cooking skills that earned him the top chef title in some of the best kitchens in the country.

Henderson started his professional career cooking at many influential restaurants, including Gadsy’s, L’Escale, the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina Del Rey, Zing and The Good Bar. In 2000, Henderson continued his rise, making history in Las Vegas as the first African-American Chef de Cuisine at Caesar's Palace. In 2001, the American Food and Wine Tasting Federation named Henderson “Las Vegas Chef of the Year.” He has since gone on to become the executive chef at the Bellagio, another first for an African American. Henderson has been honored as one of the top African-American chefs by Black Enterprise magazine. Since that time he has started a successful catering company called Posh Urban Cuisine, which is the training ground for the young participants in "The Chef Jeff Project."

Chef Jeff Henderson’s story will not only inspire career and technical educators to keep challenging their students to succeed, but it will also reinforce the importance of career and technical education in our schools.Chef Jeff's mistakes and accomplishments illustrate how learning opportunities, or lack of them, can impact a life. His experience embodies our philosophy at KP Education Systems that career skills education is the key to unlimited opportunities for all individuals regardless of background, and that is why we endeavor to assist educators in giving students superior instruction using the most up-to-date technology.

Bloom's Taxonomy

KP Education Systems strives to keep up with current practices in education and research-based pedagogy. For this reason, all of the questions in the Sous Chef, including those populating the dynamic test/quiz generator, are organized according to the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy. If you are not familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, here is a guide to help you understand the depth of the learning opportunities available to your students in the Sous Chef 7 Curriculum Suite.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of six levels of intellectual skills involved in learning (from the simplest to the most complex) that was developed by a group of educational psychologists headed by Benjamin S. Bloom in the 1950s. According to the taxonomy, the first categories must be mastered before the learner can move on to the higher levels of cognition. Bloom's Taxonomy revolutionized the way educators approached their learning objectives, since Bloom asserted that over 95% of test questions involved only the lowest level of intellectual ability--remembering data. Teachers could improve their teaching methods by applying the course content to the stages of Bloom's; they began to pay more attention to the higher levels of thinking.

A revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy was developed in the 1990s by his former student, Lorin Anderson, and a group of educational psychologists to keep the research up-to-date with contemporary learning theories and standards-based requirements. This updated model makes the objectives of each stage more specific to learner behaviors, which makes learning at each level more observable to the teacher.

Below are explanations of the levels of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy and sample questions from the Sous Chef 7 to illustrate the application of each classification.

Revised Bloom's

Remember: retrieve knowledge from the long term memory that was acquired from the lesson or reading. This first level of questions encompasses basic multiple choice, true/false, oral response, or fill-in-the-blank questions asking only for recall of the studied material (terminology, facts, places, dates and names). Key Words: define, select, state, recall, label, identify Example from the Sous Chef: How many pints are in one gallon?

Understand: understand what the remembered material means and be able to restate it. The student should be able to explain the concepts in his/her own words or interpret their meaning. Questions from this level can be essay, oral response, multiple choice, or true/false. Key Words: explain, explain why (what is the reason), comprehend, summarize, translate, interpret Example from the Sous Chef: Explain what the Model Food Code is and provide examples of its effects on the food service industry.

Apply: take the knowledge and apply it to a situation—it can either be in the form of a written explanation of a hypothetical situation or it can involve having the students execute, implement, apply, or demonstrate a concept from the learning material. These questions/learning activities are usually in the form of a task or demonstration but can also be multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank when applying a concept such as a formula or mathematical equation. Key Words: applies, computes, constructs, demonstrates, modifies, operates, prepares, produces, shows, solves, uses Example from the Sous Chef: Sanitize your workstation using the instructions in the Sanitation video. Follow the recipe and produce chicken piccata.

Analyze: break the knowledge into its pieces, analyze the relationships, and distinguish between the parts. These questions/activities come in the form of essay, oral response, or a visual project. Key words: analyze, distinguish, differentiate, compare/contrast Example from the Sous Chef: Compare and contrast the Creaming method and the Two Stage mixing method. When would you use one method rather than the other? What would be the effects on the final product?

Evaluate: evaluate a situation and make judgments using the knowledge gained. These questions/activities come in the form of essay, oral response, or a visual project. Key Words: evaluate, defend, judge, argue, support Example from the Sous Chef: Select an image from a cooking magazine of a dessert plate that shows good presentations skills and evaluate the chef's plating techniques using specific examples to support your judgment.

Create: put parts together to form a whole; create something new using the knowledge. At this level, learning activities are fully planned and executed projects in place of or in addition to written work. Key Words: assemble, create, construct, design, reconstruct, modify, generate, compile Example from the Sous Chef: Design a concept and create a proposal for your own television cooking show.

Since the higher level thinking skills often cannot effectively be made into a multiple choice or true/false question, most of the apply, analyze, evaluate, and create questions will be in the form of essay questions, demonstrations, and activities. Since learning objectives for each chapter vary, it is not uncommon for some Bloom's categories to not be represented.

KP Receives Gold Medal

May 15, Chicago, IL

At the 8th annual Corporate and Executive Chefs' Taste Summit in Chicago, KP Education Systems President Nai Wang was awarded by Chef Jesse Sartain and the American Masters of Taste a gold medal for superior quality for what the Sous Chef's contribution to culinary arts education. The Sous Chef was awarded this prestigious medal by the 10 member judging panel of Chefs in America and Chef Jesse Sartain after a rigorous review period and impact assessment of the product.

“This award means a lot to me for all the hard work and dedication of the countless individuals who have worked on making this product a reality over the past ten years. Our focus and dedication to improving culinary arts education has made a big impact on the industry and I thank Mr. Sartain for the honor of this award,” said President of KP Education Systems Nai Wang.

With the award, KP Education Systems will continue to strive to be the best developer of education products and solutions for career and technical education.
The American Masters of Taste for Chefs in America is an organization made up of executive chefs, who are industry leaders and Grand Masters in the hospitality and tourism industry, representing corporate multi-unit restaurants and food service operations. Chefs in America represents over 10,000 professional chefs around the country.

Vegas Schools Bet on Technology

Las Vegas High Schools' Clark County School District: Leaders and innovators in culinary arts education.

Clark County School District (CCSD), located in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, is a leader in educational innovation. CCSD is answering a question that faces educators today: How do teachers and administrators reach the modern millennial learners in a multimedia driven world? Students today spend most of their time 'plugged in'. They communicate, interact, and learn differently than any other generation. CCSD used this theme as the guideline for redesigning and reinvigorating their high school culinary arts programs.

Las Vegas is home to a booming restaurant industry. The cheap all-you-can-eat buffets on the Vegas strip are being replaced by fine dining establishments that boast renowned chefs and unique cuisine. Just as the change is occurring to the Vegas facade, the educational landscape is undergoing a "makeover" as well. For Clark County, the top priority is designing curricula that will engage today's millennial learners and develop tomorrow's industry professionals.

Led by Nancy Hamilton, CCSD's forward-thinking Career & Technical Education (CTE) Director, CCSD has pioneered the integration of the latest technologies, trends, equipment and methodologies into their culinary arts classroom. With Hamilton's guidance and support, every Clark County culinary arts teacher worked together to create joint lesson plans that would be integrated at a district-wide level. These lessons were built using the same computer-based culinary arts resource.

The process was simple and ingenious. CCSD took the 28 units of study that directly correlate to Nevada’s competencies for the Hospitality and Tourism Career Cluster and distributed them among 24 of their teachers to write a complete lesson plan for their assigned unit. In less than six months, the team had completed the entire process of developing unit plans, lessons, worksheets and activities. Then, they took the information from each teacher and fully integrated them into a culinary arts computer program in less than a week.

Now CCSD has a cohesive and unified culinary curriculum. Every teacher is on the same page and is teaching the same material. Furthermore, by fully utilizing a computer-based educational framework, teachers in CCSD schools now access all of their tools and materials from one convenient location. The software integration has fostered a media-rich curriculum that is ideal for administrators, teachers, and students:

• For administrators, CCSD is presently realizing the benefits and measuring the results of a successful program.
• For teachers, the transition is a dream come true, and it has never been easier to train culinary arts professionals from a high school classroom.
• For students, the CTE classroom has never been more dynamic, enjoyable, and relevant to the needs of the food service industry.

Technology and education change as rapidly as the Las Vegas skyline. As the culture of the city, its students, and its industries evolve, it is clear that CCSD will continue to lead the charge.