Schools Utilize Federal Education Funding for CTE Curriculum

Today we are taking a look at our Horticulture and Sustainable Landscape Design course, which we are updating for the 2024-2025 school year. Landscape design and horticulture is a big business and a great STEM career option for students. This industry has always been a place for those who love nature, design, and working outdoors. We are excited to offer students brand-new features that will introduce them to this exciting career pathway. Horticulture is the science and art of the development, sustainable production, marketing and use of high-value, intensively cultivated food and ornamental plants. According to the latest research, the horticulture market, valued at $31.5 billion in 2022, is expected to grow to reach $54.1 billion by 2030. The landscape design industry, which includes landscape maintenance, lawn care, pest management, irrigation and water management, arboreal services, hardscapes, and landscape design and construction for both residential and commercial properties, is currently valued at $153.5 billion and that number is only expected to grow. Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword but an important concept to help clients build outdoor spaces that are long-lasting, budget-friendly and require minimal maintenance. Industry best practices include smart plant choices that keep water usage, maintenance cost and chemical use to a minimum. Course Overview If you are looking for a STEM-rich curriculum for students who love nature, working with their hands, and want to make the world a more beautiful and healthier place, our Horticulture and Landscape Design course is for you. Horticulture and landscape design is a blend of science and art. Throughout the course, students create stunning and sustainable designs for clients. They learn how to make optimal plant choices, predict and model plant growth, and test the impact of year-round sun, shade, and water usage. Through interactive tutorials, they learn plant science and soil science that they can apply to the design decisions of the current project. Your students learn that design is not just about creating solutions but also about the ability to communicate and sell their ideas. Interactive tutorials teach them 2D/3D sketching and drafting skills as well as how to create plans tailored to their clients' needs. Optional tutorials can help you incorporate 3D CAD, although students can complete the course without diving into this section. They practice creating detailed documentation and plans to accurately communicate the implementation of their creative vision. In the real world designers always work within constraints, and your students learn how to source materials, analyze labor costs, and stay on budget. Throughout the course, they learn presentation skills and how to sell their ideas. Our course is delivered as a "Virtual Apprenticeship," a project-based learning experience that simulates a real workplace, complete with meetings, co-workers, a supervisor, and customers. Students gain industry insights and explore careers through interviews with industry experts. By the end of the course, students will have a career-ready portfolio of design projects and an understanding of how to succeed in a landscape design career. The course comes with several certificate opportunities for students. First, they will receive a course completion certificate, documenting achievement in this career-focused course. Additionally, they have the opportunity to earn two career preparation certificates: Ethics in the Workplace and Critical Thinking in the Workplace. Both of these certificates are valuable resume and portfolio builders, highlighting key characteristics that employers seek. The course allows students the freedom to work at their own pace, but they must complete the course projects and activities as assigned prior to getting authorized to sit for the final certificate exam. As with all of our courses, you, the educator, are in control. You can use the whole curriculum as the course, or you can curate what projects and tutorials to use and when to blend our content with your own activities. 2024-2025 Update Highlights Five unique projects that incorporate the Virtual Apprenticeship are included: Curb Appeal, Retirees, Hospital Courtyard, Urban Park, and the Challenge Project: Curb Appeal – Your students' first virtual apprenticeship project involves assisting a home builder in creating sustainable landscape designs that add curb appeal to his new homes. These must not only add value, but need to be seen by the potential homeowners as sustainable, low maintenance, attractive and with low water requirements. Retirees – Two recent retirees want to transform their backyard into an accessible outdoor living space for their family. The space must accommodate for a new medical diagnosis. Hospital Courtyard – A hospital needs help to design a family-friendly space for the hospital's new memory care unit, promoting family interaction and support for cognitively challenged patients. Urban Park – A non-profit needs help to design a new community space on a vacant urban lot, transforming blight into a park representing a vibrant community. Challenge Project – Your students find a live project on their own where they must enhance property value and curb appeal, using their design skills for families, churches, local businesses, or schools. New and updated interactive tutorials include: Integrated Pest Management Plant Science Soil Science Urban Agriculture Nursery and Greenhouse Practices Edible Landscapes and Foodscaping Medicinal Landscapes Design Concepts, Styles and Trends 2D Sketching and Drafting 3D CAD Tutorials (Optional) Trees and Arboriculture Sustainable Landscapes, Water Management and Xeriscaping Budgeting, Planning and Project Management Ethics in the Workplace Certificate Critical Thinking in the Workplace Certificate New Landscape Designer Mobile Web App Like all of our courses, this course is PC, Mac, and Chromebook ready. There is nothing your students will need to download. As our clients know, our legendary teacher support is at the core of what we do. When teachers have a question, they call members of our development team directly to receive guidance. Contact Us For a Free Demo Interested in learning more and seeing a free demonstration of the course or any of our other courses ? Contact us today by clicking here or calling us at 913-764-4272.

For the past few years, members of the CTeLearning team have been helping Web Professionals Global in running the national SkillsUSA competition in Atlanta, GA. Last year, we branched out into assisting with state competitions that prepare students for the national competition. Since we started working directly with states in 2022, we have seen the level of competition improve significantly at both the state level and national level. Students are better prepared than ever to hit the ground running on day one and contribute to team success. In the spring of 2024 we helped facilitate competitions in Washington, South Carolina, Arizona, Rhode Island, Vermont, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, Oregon, Oklahoma and Illinois. Web Professionals Global does all the heavy lifting and supplies the state SkillsUSA events with the following: Online web design exam similar to what the competitors might see at nationals Competition project with client assets and judging rubric Handouts for competitors with overview and links to resources Online development environment “IDE” for each competitive team Support for judges and competition chairs CTeLearning’s big contribution is loaning our CloudCodePro IDE (integrated development environment) so that each competitor has their own online coding environment that is connected to our TeacherView. This allows the judges to have live access, making it easier for them to judge each team’s work. We also loan Steve, and he ends up roping some of our other team members in to help as needed. We enjoy doing our part to help the State SkillsUSA programs. We are glad that we get to partner with Web Professionals Global and help them deliver a turnkey competition that not only makes running the state competitions easier (rather than have the burden of creating the competition from scratch), but also models the national event so the state teams get a feel for the rigor of the national competition, whether students are participating in-person or remotely. Using our CloudCodePro IDE with the TeacherView also helps encourage judge participation. This is often due to needing to travel across the state and be out of the office a day or two. Our model gives states the chance to have judges assess participants from anywhere in the state. Many states struggle with getting industry help, let alone people willing to commit to hanging around late to judge. We make it easy for judges to participate from anywhere. The Day of the Competition Let’s look at how the IL competition ran to see how our package makes life easier for the teams, volunteers and judges that make each state competition happen. The Illinois competition on April 25, 2024 is representative of what other state SkillsUSA programs experience when they work with CTeLearning and Web Professionals Global. First, the Illinois SkillsUSA team contacted us to schedule the state competition and receive the competition kit. In the following days, the Illinois SkillsUSA team met with our team to get trained on what to expect on the day of the competition and how to ensure it went smoothly. On the day of the competition, teams showed up to the venue and received handouts outlining how the competition would run. This included an introductory video outlining the online development environments (although most teams don’t need to review much as many are already with online coding environments *such as VSCode ). The team members also logged into their IDE to make sure they were ready to go when the competition began. The IDE also contained the client assets along with a readme file explaining what each team needs to focus on if they want to win the competition (for example, make certain to preview your work to verify images are linked properly). Students were then introduced to their client for the competition and began to analyze the client’s needs, target audience and images and logos they would be using. After this introduction, students began the competition in their teams and started building their websites. Teams are not allowed to use frameworks of any sort (or help from AI), and doing so results in disqualification. We want competitors to use their knowledge and skills to demonstrate their understanding of responsive design, web accessibility and much more. Relying on a framework can hamper this demonstration as frameworks can be relied upon as a crutch. Upon completion of the competition, the judges used the online judging system that we provided. This included a fair and easy-to-use rubric for judging the work of each team. Judges are able to review all teams' work from a single view and can examine the end result or the code directly in the browser. This system ensures a transparent judging process that is consistent with the process that winning teams experience at the national competition. The winners of the Illinois competition were then submitted to the national competition and invited to participate in June. Chat With Us We are proud to be a part of this growing network of state competitions. Feel free to get in touch with us by clicking here or calling us at 913-764-4272 to learn more and have your state take advantage of our solution next year.