Technology Teacher Education graduate Pat Kelly and retired TTED instructor Peter Trant with a V8 engine-turned-barbecue.
BCIT’s Technology Teacher Education (TTED) program, a joint program offered with UBC, trains tomorrow’s middle- and high-school shop teachers. Students learn (and learn how to teach) such diverse areas as electronics, woodwork, metalwork, automotive, power and energy technology, drafting, design, and manufacturing.
A woodworking project shows minimal wood waste.
As teachers in training, it is especially important that TTED students learn to model the latest in sustainable techniques and reduce toxins in curriculum whenever possible. That’s why instructors in the program initiated a number of changes to reduce waste and encourage the repurposing of materials.
As an exercise in reusing discarded materials (aka “trash”), students rebuilt bicycles that had been sent to the landfill, making them available to needy individuals—locally and in Cuba. And metalwork students were challenged, in something called the “Phoenix Project,” to locate a discarded metal item and transform it into a functional or aesthetic product. Out of this project came such inventions as the V8 barbecue—and yes, it works!
For more information on sustainability initiatives in this program, check out the project case study. You can also learn more about sustainability at BCIT.
