What is ATE Central?
ATE Central is a free online portal and collection of materials and services dedicated to highlighting the work of Advanced Technological Education (ATE) projects and centers. These National Science Foundation-funded initiatives, primarily based at two-year colleges, develop and implement ideas to improve the skills of technicians and the educators who teach them. ATE Central helps educators, students, and the general public learn about, and use materials from, the entire depth and breadth of the Advanced Technological Education program.
ATE Central helps direct users to a full range of high-impact ATE resources available online, including curricula, learning objects, podcasts, videos, and more. The portal also aggregates information about the materials developed by ATE centers and projects, and organizes them using subject taxonomies, context appropriate keywords, and other digital cataloging techniques.
Amplifying the Efforts of the ATE Community
The mission of ATE Central is to provide tools, services, and materials that amplify the efforts of the ATE community and connect STEM educators with valuable digital resources and technology. As part of this mission, ATE Central offers a number of tools and services, all free of charge, to the ATE community, including:
- Events Calendar: ATE Central collects and summarizes events by and relevant to ATE projects and centers, posts them to an online events list, and pushes them out through the monthly ATE Central Connection. Projects and centers can also create customizable Events Widgets to add updated lists of events to their own sites.
- PI Meeting App: In collaboration with app developers, ATE Central designs a mobile app to streamline attendee experience at the annual Principal Investigators Meeting.
- Archiving: ATE Central offers an archiving service to projects and centers that would like to include it as a component of their Data Management or Sustainability plans.
- ATE Central Connection: Published the first Monday of each month, the ATE Central Connection disseminates information to and about ATE centers and projects. The publication provides up-to-date ATE news, events, and reminders, and features a wide variety of centers, projects, and resources. To illustrate how ATE resources can be used in the classroom, the ATE Central Connection highlights an educational topic with complementary resources created by members of the ATE community and found within ATE Central.
- Outreach Kit: The ATE Central Outreach Kit can help projects and centers come up with an outreach plan or develop outreach ideas. Created in partnership with WGBH, the Outreach Kit includes sections on planning, social media, communication/traditional media, and resources to support outreach.
- ATE Central Handbook: The Handbook is designed to support the goals of ATE projects and centers and help integrate information about their initiatives, events, and valuable resources into the ATE Central portal. The Handbook also serves as a starting guide to disseminating that information to others in the NSF community and beyond.