[Ubuntu-PH] Is CAD still relevant? Yes and no by chris dawson

["Yosif ali" Roque Morales]

February 5th, 2009 Is CAD still relevant? Yes and
no<http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2135>

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 10:13 pm

*Categories:* Education Technology <http://education.zdnet.com/?cat=1>

*Tags:* AutoCAD <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/AutoCAD.html>,
Student<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Student.html>,
CAD <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/CAD.html>,
Productivity<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Productivity.html>,
Manufacturing <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Manufacturing.html>......,
Software <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Software.html>, Christopher
Dawson<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Christopher+Dawson.html>
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Talking with a school committee member tonight, I was reminded (quite
rightfully), how important it is to consider the community in which we live
as we design courses. She was very concerned that I had eliminated CAD from
our course offerings in favor of programming and advanced web design
courses, leaving a potentially valuable skill-based course for students who
won't be headed to college off the books.

Since we live in a town built around a manufacturing economy, it's quite
likely that a number of our graduates won't head for college and instead
need to be prepared to enter the workforce. While it might seem like this
should be the job of a vocational/technical school, in fact our voc-tech
programs are highly competitive, shutting out students who can still really
benefit from whatever pre-employment 21st Century skills we can offer.

Yet if I simply offer CAD as we teach it now, I'm doing it at the expense of
the programming courses another subset of our students desperately needs. I
could reduce the number of sections and attempt to strike a balance, but the
licensing for AutoCAD is fairly expensive. Is it worth the price at 20-30
students per year?

There are free and open source drafting tools, but they don't come anywhere
close to the capabilities of AutoCAD. So what do we do? I would suggest that
we change the CAD course to be "Technical Project Management." We could, at
the same time, change the focus of the course from teaching a tool (AutoCAD)
to teaching students to communicate well in a technical setting. How do we
get our ideas across to one another? How do we ensure that our ideas are
translated into working products? Through drawings. In this sense, free
diagramming tools would be very appropriate as they are a piece of a much
larger pie.

What if the course were project-based? Design, test, and produce a product.
This would require detailed drawings and schematics, but the communication
with classmates graphically would be much more important than a particular
tool. We could also incorporate budgeting, design tradeoffs, marketing, and
sales, making the class accessible and usable for a far larger group of
students.

Will students be able to walk out of the class AutoCAD-certified? No, but
they will be able to walk into a job and translate ideas to paper and
ultimately to action. They will be able to read blueprints and understand
scale, while also building teamwork and communication skills. This seems
like a far more valuable set of skills than AutoCAD alone while still
drawing heavily on the graphical documentation and communication so vital to
modern manufacturing.

What do you think? Is this a worthy compromise, or should CAD stay in a
school centered in a manufacturing economy?
[image: Christopher Dawson]

Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School
District in northern Massachusetts. See his full
profile<http://blogs.zdnet.com/bio.php#dawson>and
disclosure <http://education.zdnet.com/?page_id=1156> of his industry
affiliations.


-- 
Yosif Roque Santos Morales
====================
School Administrator
Asian Academy of Business and Computers
Professor, Sociology, Strategic Studies and Islamology
Ubuntulinux user
Linux machine # 365046.
http://lamundofloss.blogspot.com/
http://mafatihulhikmah.blogspot.com/
http://strategicresearchinstitute.blogspot.com/
Mobile number +639275642816
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