Last week I did a post where an effort at SMU to develop an IT industry leadership certification program was mentioned. Yesterday HP announced the Industry’s First IT-focused Business Certification for Students.

The HP ATA – IT for Business certification empowers the next generation of business professionals with an understanding of IT concepts to help facilitate this alignment and address the skills gap. Students learn through courseware and practical experience by executing real-world scenarios involving business-driven technology initiatives. The certification, which is delivered through HP Institute, will be accessible to students at leading universities and is designed to equip business students with job-ready skills that allow them to understand technology concepts and IT capabilities from a business perspective.

I wonder if I can get these two groups to talk with each other?!?

Recently NMC, ISTE, and HP launched the HP Catalyst Academy. The HP Catalyst Academy extends the work of the HP Catalyst Initiative, which was launched in 2010 to support innovations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) teaching and learning. To date, 56 organizations in 15 countries have received grants from HP to explore how emerging technologies and great teaching can be combined to create powerful STEMx learning experiences for more than 130,000 students around the globe.

Beginning in June 2013, the HP Catalyst Academy will offer its first set of online mini-courses, covering a wide range of topics such as:

• Building a Framework for Digital Fabrication
• Social Textbooks
• Computational Thinking in Secondary Schools
• Connecting Students to their World
• Game Design for Learning
• Geospacial Tech for STEMx Learning
• Helping Students Change their World through App Design
• InkSurvey: Graphical Response Tool for Real-Time Formative Assessment
• Multi/Interdisciplinary STEMx Teaching
• Planning Enriching ICT-Mediated STEMx Experiences
• Polar Bears in a Changing Climate
• Project-based Learning with Real-World Problems
• Remote Labs
• Weaving Social Media into STEM Teaching
• Strategies for Formative Assessment though e-Portfolios

The mini-course leaders, known as HP Catalyst Fellows, are working to develop these innovative online professional learning experiences.

I’ll definitely see if I can find out more about the Digital Fabrication mini-course.

Helping educators prepare to both understand these subjects and their application in business is one way to ensure that we’ll have the kind of candidates needed for the workplace of the future.

I forgot to add that HP has announced that the RFP is now open for the next group of Fellows to lead mini-courses: http://hp.com/go/hpcatalystacademy.

The deadline is July 8th.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger had a post: STEM Literacy is for Everyonethat aligns with an area where I spend my volunteer time.

Although STEM education activities may need to be different than what is traditionally thought about by educators today.

With a significant portion of college age students not going to colleges straight out of high school:

• 4.1% high school dropout rate nationally in 2008-2009 without graduating (that dropout rate was lower than I thought by the way)
• Of those that remain, 68.3% of 2011 high school graduates went on to college

STEM education will likely need to be a bit more practical, if we expect the entire student body to embrace the implications of the changes underway. More of our lives, regardless of profession or role involve science, technology, engineering and math concepts. There are definitely STEM aspects to plumbing, carpentry, farming and many other fields that high-school graduates perform straight out of high school. Addressing the type of STEM training needed will help them throughout their lives, especially if at a later date they want to gain a GED or advanced degree.

This significant percentage of the population can't feel they are failures, if they don’t immediately go on to college. They also shouldn’t feel alienated from the technical flow that has become integral to life today, even if they never advance their education.

The diverse needs of the entire educational market need to be embraced, not just those who know they are going to STEM programs in college. All businesses will benefit from this more holistic approach.

We need the education system to provide platforms to teachers and students to enable Education 2.0. And it’s not just about the technology, Education 2.0 must support the knowledge economy and therefore there must be a focus on creativity and innovation.

Having installed its fourth 'Lab-in-Box' (a self-sustainable computer lab in a shipping container) at Ahmedabad, India, Hewlett-Packard (HP) India is now in talks with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) for installing more education focused labs.

Each HP Lab-in-Box comprises a shipping container that has 15 HP multi-seat thin client workstations, a multifunctional printer, wireless connectivity, electricity, furniture, fans and air conditioning. This approach allows multiple users (students in many cases) to be connected to one machine, which maximizes space and resource utilization while reducing cost and complexity. The same techniques that allow for containerized data centers have other applications as well.

While HP India is in talks with central and state governments for installing these labs across public schools in India, it has received demands from other countries as well. "Even Indonesia, Afghanistan and other African countries have also been demanding this lab but we are waiting for the pilot projects to get stabilized," said Jaijit Bhattacharya director, Government Affairs, HP India.

The HP labs organization in India has been researching ways to impact education through computing. We’ll likely see a number of products and approaches in the coming years that continue this wave forward.

Even though there has been a great deal of talk about the Kahn Academy and various on-line efforts to shift how education is performed, some foundational infrastructure is still required.