Mark your calendar today for the best professional development event of the year, December 2-4 in Las Vegas. Registration is now open (print form). See below for hotel reservations. Check back often or subscribe to this page via RSS for all the latest information and updates!
Interested in exhibiting at the Career Tech Expo? Information is available here.
ACTE is pleased to announce Tim Sanders and Matthew B. Crawford as keynote speakers for its 2010 Annual Convention, December 2-4.
General Session SpeakersA former Yahoo! will open ACTE’s 2010 Annual Convention and Career Tech Expo. Tim Sanders, who served as chief solutions officer and leadership coach at Yahoo! will welcome nearly 5,000 career and technical educators to Las Vegas during his presentation that will focus on the value of creating, growing and nurturing strong business relationships. Sanders’ insights are extremely valuable to career and technical educators as they prepare their students for the world of work while at the same time they engage and work with the business community. Sanders has written three books that cover the topics of knowledge sharing and networking, the concept of emotional talent and creating an engaging experience, and corporate social responsibility. Sanders will definitely set the stage for an intense, engaging and rewarding three days of professional development—you won’t want to miss him!
Following Sanders, the CTE Foundation and Apple want you to think about learning in the CTE classroom and beyond. What does learning look like? Where does it occur? How can we create learning environments to support the way our students learn? Bring your thoughts and ideas to the Friday General Session to explore this topic with an interactive panel of teachers and students. Through the use of video, live participants and the audience, attendees will dive into these themes and more! Audience members will be encouraged to submit questions electronically.
The Friday General Session will also include the official announcements of the ACTE National Awards. Come to see, support and cheer for the best in career and technical education!
Philosopher and mechanic Matthew B. Crawford brings to life the experience of making things with your hands, a reality that is receding from our current society. As an author of the New York Times best-selling book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, Crawford restored the honor of manual trades as a life worth choosing. As a speaker, Crawford mixes his dark humor with philosophy to consider how our economic choices form us, questioning the modern workplace, consumerism and technology. More information is available at www.matthewbcrawford.com.
John Hofmeister, founder and CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy, will open the Saturday General Session by sharing his insights on the need to educate citizens and government officials about pragmatic, non-partisan affordable energy solutions, environmental protection, energy alternatives, efficiency, infrastructure, public policy, competitiveness, social cohesion and quality of life. Hofmeister, author of the recently published Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk From an Energy Insider, is the former president of Shell Oil and speaks with extensive insider knowledge. You won’t want to miss what he has to say. Hofmeister will be signing copies of his book following the General Session.
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ACTE is proud to announce that, in partnership with the Home Builders Institute and Habitat for Humanity, attendees at this year’s ACTE Annual Convention and Career Tech Expo will be able to participate in the Association’s first-ever Day of Service.
The event will occur on Saturday, December 4, in the afternoon, when registered attendees will assist Habitat for Humanity in building homes for needy families in Clark County. HBI’s generous support of this event will provide participant meals and transportation.
Convention attendees interested in participating in this event can register by completing the Convention registration form (print form) and indicating their interest. They can also do so by calling ACTE at 800-826-9972. Those wishing to participate will need to be in Las Vegas through 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, 2010. Space is limited, so please only register if you are committed to participating.
If you have any questions, please call ACTE at 800-826-9972.
Pre-Convention Tours
Please note: All industry and school tours will be held Wednesday,
Dec. 1.
Industry Tours
See how the companies for which you prepare your students operate and rely on a trained workforce.
Switch | NAP
Affectionately called the "Fort Knox of Data," Switch | NAP is the world's most powerful data center, combined with industry-changing telecommunications pricing. It is located in the safest-rated city in America and protected by the highest levels of physical security. It is home to data for such multi-billion-dollar tech giants as Google, Disney Animations and Sony, and numerous financial giants, such as the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. This tour is seriously mind-blowing. 1:30-4:30 p.m. Photo ID required.
Zappos.com
This tour allows you to experience the culture that is Zappos.com. The founder's original idea was to create a Web site that offered the absolute best selection in shoes in terms of brands, styles, colors, sizes and widths. Over the past nine years, the Zappos.com brand and their aspirations have evolved and, in addition to offering the best selection, they now want to be the company that provides the absolute best service online—not just in shoes, but in any category. They have been voted the #1 company in America to work for. 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Cirque du Soleil
The Cirque du Soleil industry tour will focus on automation and electrics. It is part of the of the Southwest Technical Academy Entertainment Engineering program and is limited to 50 attendees. 1:30-4:0 p.m.
School Tours
Pick the brains of your colleagues and see their best practices in action.
Veterans Tribute and Southwest Career and Technical Academies
Visit two schools that opened in 2009. Tour Veterans Tribute first and see how they integrate rigorous coursework into preparing students for careers in public service, including law enforcement, crime scene analysis, EMT and computer forensics. Enjoy lunch provided by Southwest’s culinary students, then tour their 11 programs under the Design Academy and the Professional Service Academy. Observe how Southwest utilizes project-based learning activities to prepare students for the workforce. This dual tour begins at 8:00 a.m. and concludes at 2:00 p.m.
UNLV Harrah's Hotel College
This tour includes round-trip transfers from the Las Vegas Convention Center, a student-catered lunch and tour of one of the nation's highest-rated culinary arts and hospitality programs. Facilities on the tour include lecture halls, culinary kitchens, a gaming lab, conference rooms and back-of-the-house areas. 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
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Pre-Convention Sessions
How to Be Enrollment- and Retention-rich With Millennials
Stop being a “best-kept secret” and start maximizing enrollment. Career and technical education and retention expert Mark C. Perna will share the secrets to significantly increasing enrollment, retention and graduation rates. These decisive and timely strategies will help you retain students through consistent engagement and relationship-building, make the most of your existing organizational and financial resources and proactively shape community awareness and opinion. Perna is the founder of Tools for Schools, a full-service marketing and consulting firm specializing in the career and technical education field.
This session will be held Wednesday, Dec. 1, 8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Designing High-quality Career and Technical Courses That Contribute to Whole School Improvement
This full-day pre-Convention session will focus on designing career technical courses that engage students around challenging authentic workplace assignment and assessments in which they develop 21st-century skills related to teamwork, accountability and problem solving. Learn strategies for embedding the academic skills necessary to meet the demands of a complex, technology-based economy. This session will provide specific strategies that career and technical educators can use to increase the quality of their courses, contribute to the overall improvement of high schools and boost school-wide student achievement.
This session will be held Wednesday, Dec. 1, 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. and is put on by High Schools That Work.
NRCCTE Jump-start Workshops
These unique, interactive sessions, "Math-in-CTE" and "Authentic Literacy-in-CTE," will help you gain a deeper understanding of the science behind these tested curriculum integration models, and practice key aspects of the models. Jump‐start workshop sessions will be specific to integration of math or literacy, so participants must choose and register for one or the other. Because NRCCTE uses a team approach, it is recommended that state agencies, regional consortia or districts send select teams of teachers to gain optimum benefit from the sessions.
These sessions will be held Tuesday, Nov. 30 and Wednesday, Dec. 1. The cost is $495 per person before August 15, or $550 on or after that date. Click here for more information, or contact Jennifer Sawyer at jennifer.sawyer@louisville.edu or 502-852-6428.
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Partners, Partners, Partners
Much of the success of last year's Convention was due to the content-provider partnerships ACTE established. Those will continue in Las Vegas. To date, ACTE has secured the support of:
- Association for Career and Technical Education Research—CTE researchers will be in Nashville discussing the latest findings and how they may pertain to the classroom.
- NOCTI—NOCTI will be hosting a pre-Convention assessment conference, “Round Up Your Data for Program Success.” The conference will focus on how programs around the country are improving their students’ technical competence, improving their instructional programs and becoming leaders in the educational community through their use and analysis of assessment data. Click here for session details.
- High Schools That Work—High Schools That Work will be hosting a pre-Convention session, "Designing High-quality Career Technical Courses That Contribute to Whole School Improvement."
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