Welcome to Technidigm-2000! We think that you will find this to be a great year to teach your students common sense strategies that will serve them well in our modern society and in this modern technical environment. In this new millennium, now is the time for each of us to decide how we intend to contribute to improving mankind's role in the world. Start laying out your overall calendar, summer schedule, and daily plans today!
Yes, you are in the right place, even if you do not have any idea about what this thing called Technidigm-2000 may be! Just as Thomas Paine stirred up the colonists in early 1776 with his book on Common Sense, Technidigm-2000 is likely to stir you up and, in turn, help you capture the imagination of your students! The best part is that we are still just talking about common sense, but the modern version of it. Well, maybe the best part is that you can use Technidigm-2000 to keep you busy and productive during the summer months!
First, decide how many weeks you can devote to teaching Technidigm-2000 and mark them on your calendar. Do not forget to include vacation time for you and your family. Skip the week after school lets out and the week before it starts again. Start recruiting students to do something new and different this summer!
If they are old enough to go to summer camp, are they old enough to think for themselves? Technidigm-2000 provides a simple but powerful framework within which to do that thinking! You may already know dozens of kids who would be eager to let you be their guide in exploring Technidigm-2000 and applying its 12 elements to the problems they face in their daily lives. Although they may not appreciate it right away, they will be far better prepared to deal with the profoundly difficult issues of modern society.
Start writing down the names of the students, other young people, and youth groups in your school and community. Some may already be signed up with other teachers. Find out who those other teachers are and get coordinated! The goal is to get every kid and young adult signed up for a week-long summer "day camp" where they can spend their time productively. Some students will want to continue meeting and learning longer, so you may have to be flexible.
Next, decide how much salary you want to pay yourself each week. It should be at least as much as you make doing other things and should account for the extra 15% or so for self-employment taxes. Based on this salary expectation, determine how many students per week you would need at a (nominal) rate of $30 per student to achieve that expectation. Multiply that number of students by a factor of two, and set this as your recruiting goal for the first week! You will know soon enough whether you have to shift students around or find more teachers to help you!
Also, make sure that you start learning about or refreshing your memory on the 12 Technidigm-2000 elements, either on the Internet (http://Technidigm.org) or by reviewing the Student Workbook, which is linked below. Each of the 12 elements is summarized in the Student Workbook, and several discussion questions are provided as samples which you can use. The summaries will get the students thinking, and the questions that follow each of the summaries will keep them thinking.
For each question, focus on one of the 12 elements for a while and then pick another one. Inject familiar examples or issues and encourage the students to do likewise. It is important to allow the students to think of examples and to develop their own applications to issues that they consider important.
You will also want to start recruiting sponsors to support you and your efforts, recruiting students and obtaining supplemental funds for students who may not be able to pay your full "tuition." For example, you should contact student clubs at local schools and provide information regarding your Technidigm-2000 topic, your estimated schedule, the modest cost, and the number of openings in each class. You might publish an announcement in a student paper or a community newspaper.
Expect a mix of success and rejection, but make sure you are giving your best effort on behalf of the community and the students. Let the money take care of itself, and focus on being creative and an effective discussion leader. Consider using the facilities of a local community college or university, perhaps helping some of your students to become more familiar with the higher education environment. Most younger students like to be able to say that they spent part of their summer "at college"!
Make a list of the top ten employers, top ten social clubs, and top ten churches in your community. Then take a deep breath and call the top executive, leader, or minister at each of them and ask for their tentative support of facilities and/or community service money. Most of them will be able to access the Internet and look up Technidigm-2000 themselves, but it is better if you can sit down with them and personally explain what you are doing in terms of community service and youth improvement. If you have clippings from local newspapers regarding youth issues, all the better. This is what we want to be – a relevant answer to today's world and current issues!
Keep in mind that many churches have special activities for their young people during the summer and that they are looking for creative ways to improve the personal character of their young people. It can be tough for them to get teens involved in summer activities unless the mutual benefits are clear. Many churches have funds or programs for community outreach and should be very interested in what you have to say. Technidigm-2000 is a neutral framework that applies to almost any set of circumstances where principles and objectives are involved!
Give potential sponsors a rough estimate of your plans and costs and let them get involved! Donut forget that they could well want to hire you to provide training to their employees or members on Technidigm-2000, and be prepared to give them your hourly rate as a consultant or instructor! An hourly rate of $30 translates into an annual wage of about $60,000. Most companies and organizations will consider this to be cheap help, considering what you are doing for them. However, they will not be interested if you appear to be more worried about getting paid than helping them improve their employees’ problem solving and communications capabilities. The worst case scenario is that you will have no sponsors and will have to rely on students paying a tuition, but every contact you make opens up possibilities for better financing and more students to teach. You win no matter how much you fail! Communicate!!
Even if local companies do not want to help you or hire you as a consultant
for their own staff now, they may after they see what a good job you do
working with the youth in the community! Get each organization to
sponsor at least one student ($30), but expect them to sponsor ten students
($300)!! Based on the level of support received, decide how much
additional money is needed from the students as a tuition fee, keeping
in mind that some students will not be able to pay as much as others.
Use your judgment and issue $30 "scholarships" on the condition that the
student immediately calls an appropriate sponsor to thank them for their
support. If you end up with too much money, apply it to next years
program!
Each student will need a 3-ring binder and related office supplies to create and index a personal version of Technidigm-2000 applications in a workbook. For those students who do a good job, this workbook will serve later as a portfolio of their intellectual credentials. It will evolve from a summer activity workbook to a framework for their professional files, regardless of the profession. For some, the workbook will form the basis for college theses and may even get passed down to their children. It is up to you to help them create a neat and well focused workbook, allowing them to take pride in starting a life-long, living journal!
You can facilitate the development of a set of good workbooks for your students by getting really good binders and support materials. Alphabetical index dividers are good for separating topical areas while allowing easy access later. Start your own binder and include clippings from local newspapers that include issues of importance to the students as well as to you. Excitement is contagious, so be excited!
Workbooks can also be "paperless" and kept in electronic form. In such cases, it will be important to have copy machines, computers, printers, a scanner, and extra floppy disks available. This can be an opportunity for students to develop their computer hardware and software knowledge and skills. They can also develop their presentation skills. If a particularly appropriate presentation can be developed to present to local or state officials on an important issue, your students can have a significant impact on how that issue is decided.
You will also want to develop your students’ diplomas. If you have the appropriate software, you can do this quite readily. For many students, this will be a document that they keep forever. Remember that you will want some of the same students to come back next year, so you should develop a set of graduated diplomas that take the student from Technidigm Apprentice Level, to Technidigm Intermediate Level, to Technidigm Advanced Level, and to Technidigm Expert. Again, Technidigm will you with electronic examples if you request this, but you should customize them to reflect your community work and the students’ specific accomplishments. They will also be interested in having the diplomas signed by their favorite teacher or by a local community leader.
Diplomas may also list the key topics or issues addressed by the student
or the class during the session. In some cases it will be appropriate to
generalize these topics and simplify them into meaningful categories. One
student may have excelled in social issues and another student in the communications
area. Some will have looked at constitutional issues and others at government
or management issues. A few will have actually performed a service
within their local community as part of the learning process. The
diploma should reflect that area of study or service.
Any statement made by any student on any subject should offers you an opportunity to respond instantly from at least one of the 12 possible Technidigm-2000 perspectives. Even the student who appears to be in a bad mood or self-conscious can be asked about those feelings, perhaps in terms of how time (one of the 12 elements) will cause those feelings to change. Ask, don't tell!
Even more fundamentally, you can explain to the students that when we are in a bad mood, we are likely to be off-the-level. In this negative condition, we may say things that are not well thought out or appropriate for the situation at hand. Keep a sense of humor and avoid making things worse by being too personal.
You should use third-person dialog and keep the discussion on how the world and society work. Much of the initial discussion will simply be about how we can tell whether or not a person is ready to contribute to solving a problem rather than making it worse. Polarization can be a very hot topic, so sometimes it is better to be hypothetical and use neutral terms or analogies. Remember, we want students to learn to think constructively and logically, not argue mindlessly. Each statement by the teacher or by a student should be made within the context of one of the 12 Technidigm elements. The class could even offer an additional element or two, if this would be useful to the discussion.
Experienced teachers have several student-involvement strategies that they like to use. As in the regular classroom, there will be a range of responses from the students. The key difference in your summer classes may be that you can deal more dramatically with any student who is disruptive or a non-participant. You can use a disruptive student as an example of someone who is off-the-level and not deserving of the additional time that it takes the teacher to deal with them. If none of the students are disruptive, then it may be necessary to ask one of them to act disruptive or negative, allowing the other students to try to view negative behavior from the perspective of Technidigm-2000 common sense. This will make it less likely that the students will be influenced by negative peer pressure during the regular school year.
The questions found in the Student Workbook provide an easy way to get students involved. You should discuss the questions in advance each day, challenging the students to go home and write or outline draft answers to them by the next day. Of course, you may have more success if you allow them some time to write and report during class time. Also, each student can be assigned as the leader or facilitator for the class discussion, preparing in advance to develop potential answers to each question through group participation.
Remember to save time at the end of the week for review. You can
also have a graduation program where parents and other teachers can observe
the results of the students’ efforts. Knowing that their workbooks
and other items may be on display at the end of the week will add motivation
to the week!