I have to admit to feeling a little…dinosaurish, when I read through the Standards for Teachers article. I teach metalworking in a senior high school, and apart from the computer in my office I think a metalworking teacher from 1950 could walk into my classroom (shop) and feel quite comfortable. In fact, if he (definitely ‘he’ from that time period) wasn’t told what year it was, and there were no students in the class at the time, I doubt if he would know what year he was in. In other words, the digital age hasn’t entered my teaching area very profoundly. Which is odd in a way. Well over 10 years ago the general name for my area changed from Industrial Education to Technology Education, I guess in an attempt to widen the scope and philosophy of the area to include, not just ‘making stuff’, but also ideas on the role of technology in society. For most teachers though, and I’m just as guilty here, that move from just making stuff hasn’t happened. My concern is, by running our classes the way they’ve been run for the past 100 years are we going to start losing students because the classes will seem archaic in the digital age. This is what I’m hoping to get out of 565. I would like to be able to develop a program that includes some of the more current teaching technologies, even if it’s something as simple as a new way of presenting a shop technique. I’m convinced that most of the students who take my class are still primarily interested in working with their hands and building projects, but if I can at least show that I’m trying to bring the program into the current age it will do a lot to keep the class from seeming archaic and may even draw in a wider range of students.