Hello fellow 4200 classmates, and welcome to my Blog. My name is Tyler Cook. My major is TEE (Technology and Engineering Education) or more commonly recognized as “Shop”. Although there are a lot of different courses I am trained to teach (Auto-mechanics, Woods, CAD, Construction, Introduction to engineering, etc.) what I will ideally teach would be Manufacturing Processes/ CIM classes. Whatever that means, right? Think of a metals shop plus robots! CIM stands for Computer Integrated Manufacturing. So along with teaching my students how to operate equipment such as lathes and molds, I would also have a CNC mill that they could write and run a program to etch their initials into a piece of metal. Another example would be building a robot and creating a program for it to complete a simple task like scooping up some bean bags and dumping them into a trough.

There are two main reasons that contributed to myself entering the TEE program. The first is that I had a great experience in the metal shop classes I took in high school. I enjoyed making things. Because of that, I wanted to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. However, after a few semesters of mediocre grades and a terrible time, my friend introduced me to the TEE major. Later I realized that I had not succeeded because I had a different learning style that is completely ignored in the introductory courses offered by the engineering department. With them it was all lecture, reading and writing. The way I learn is more kinesthetic, hands on. I learn by doing. The TEE program is a perfect match for me. It is all project based learning.

That leads into what this discipline means to me. It is a way of teaching, a way to help students succeed, in school outside the normal means of educating. My hope is that my class will be a place where the kids that “just don’t learn” can experience success and show that they can achieve academically. So my students actually become literate in one facet of technology. Often when we are asked about being literate, we automatically think about reading, writing, and proper English. But that is being literate in English. I would argue that you can be literate in anything, like the gaming example from class. He clearly knew what he was doing in reference to the game he liked to play. For technology, I believe that being literate means that you can use, manage, maintain, and assess technology.