Hello Texas CTE!

A few weeks ago, we launched the Texas CTE Resource center at www.txcte.org (http://www.txcte.org). This week we are providing an update on our progress.

Grantee Sites Decommissioning August 31st, 2017
As a reminder, the current grantee websites are available through the end of the month. After August 31st, the content on those sites will no longer be available. Due to contract issues, some decommissioning may begin the day of the 31st, so don’t wait until the last minute to download anything that you want from those sites. There will be no support for accessing content after the sites are decommissioned. Remember that content on these sites is not aligned to the new CTE TEKS in effect for the 2017-2018 school year.

New Work-Based Learning Course
We are excited to announce the publication of the new Work-Based Learning course in Gateway Courses (https://www.texascourses.org/courses/course-v1:TexasGateway+CTEWBLCRS01+2017/about). The TEA CTE team and our partners have put a lot of effort into improving and updating the Work-Based Learning course. Read more and enroll in the Work-based Learning course (https://www.texascourses.org/courses/course-v1:TexasGateway+CTEWBLCRS01+2017/about) here.

Scope and Sequence Documents
On Friday, we finished publishing the remaining scope and sequence documents for all 277 CTE courses. You can filter for scope and sequence documents by navigating to the search page, selecting on the left site of the screen the associated career cluster and “scope and sequence” in the material type field.

Lesson Plans
Since February we have updated and aligned to the TEKS over 690 CTE lesson plans. We will  work on another batch of lesson plans through the end of August and are planning for additional lesson plan development and alignment starting in September. Next year we plan to double the number of CTE lesson plans that are aligned to the new TEKS.

Searching Tips and Finding where to Download Documents
Several users have reported difficulty in finding resources, or having challenges in finding where to download documents. This week we created several helpful search tips resources that will provide the more common searching techniques and give information on where to download documents. Visit the help center TCRC Content Section.

For the Best Experience, use Chrome or Firefox Browsers
The CTE Resource Center displays best in either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browsers. If you are still having issues viewing content, visit the help center and see if a help article will provide a solution. If an article does not answer your question, you can also submit a help desk request, located at the end of each article.

We are proud to offer the Texas CTE Resource Center to the Texas CTE community. The CTE team had under 6 months from the launch of several interdependent projects to update as much content as possible, build and align resources to the new TEKS, and launch the new site before the start of school this year. With the decommissioning of the grantee resource sites, and with most of the existing content not being aligned to the new TEKS, we made the decision to provide as much content that is aligned to the new TEKS as possible.

Based on initial feedback from CTE colleagues in the field, we are currently planning next year’s work, preparing to build and publish course pages for all 277 CTE courses that will include the course description, TEKS information, scope and sequence document, lesson plans, and supplemental materials all on one page. On each career cluster page, we will link to the courses within that career cluster.

• Add hundreds of new TEKS aligned, template based lesson plans, and add supplemental instructional materials where we can to enhance the lessons (PowerPoint documents, quizzes, handouts).
• Re-write each of the 16 career cluster guides.
• Develop several helpful CTE program planning guides that will assist with offering new courses and strengthen district and industry partnerships.
• Add additional search filters to be able to further narrow search results.

We are listening to your ideas and comments regarding how the content is displayed, about site navigation and organization, and the types of content you want on the site. We use this information to plan future content development and enhance site functionality. We appreciate your patience as we continue to develop additional content and functionality.

Sincerely,
The TEA Texas CTE Team