"Urban schools" in the US is a euphemism for "social poverty" regardless of race even though the majority of urban districts are black. Some school districts in Michigan have set up vocational technical high schools as a means to not only provide a good education for children in their districts, but also as a means for bringing about social mobility to the children as many of them come from families where generations were engaged in the same type of blue collar jobs in the automobile industry. This seminar will introduce the purpose, settings, programs and challenges for a typical vocational technical high school in Michigan, USA.
The speaker, Ms Ann Chow is currently visiting Hong Kong as a technology consultant for The ISF Academy, the new Private Independent School (to be set up at the Cyberport). Ms Chow is a program manager at GASC Technology Center, a technology/vocational high school serving 21 school districts in Genesee County, Michigan. In her role as the Program Manager of Business and Visual Communications and Computer Science, Ann sets directions and implementations for various curricula such as information system, Web and Internet management and applications, business management in finance, videography, photography, graphic illustration, and computer graphic animations.