General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Resource Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

This project proposal by the Enterprise Education teachers at Belanger Memorial is primarily focussed on an investigation of government (federal, provincial, municipal) rules and regulations which would impact on the student selected enterprises being developed by various working groups of students taking the course.

As there are a wide variety of student business ventures having financial, operational, and marketing plans developed, many different government agencies would have a regulatory interest in the enterprises. In order to develop their plans in a mature fashion students need timely access to current laws, especially those administered by agencies concerned with health, fire, safety, taxation, and employer/employee relations. Most of this information, at least at the federal and provincial levels, now exists a travois sites on the Internet. A wide variety of other valuable enterprise information could also be accessed during the timeframe of this project.

  Curriculum Connections

Upon approval of this project, Enterprise Education students will finally have access to the large number of resources on the Internet directly related to their individuals projects, including general entrepreneurial advice, business plan models, and sites dealing with their own specific ventures. This responds to many specific curriculum outcomes for the course subsumed under the general heading; The Role of Communications and Technology in Developing a Venture.

The students will be able to:

• Access web sites to gather financial information.
• Use computer networks to research ideas that are available from those networks.
• Evaluate information from on-line news sources to keep up with current trends.
• Use computer networks to do market research.
• use on-line computer programs to gather statistics for market research.
• Identify Internet marketing mechanisms and describe how they can be used to promote a venture.
• Appraise the value of communications technology in international trade.
• Access and evaluate financial data bases such as stock exchanges to gather investment information.
• Use computer networks to create links with other enterprising individuals.
• Use electronic mail to send and receive information from other individuals.

Skill development and reinforcement will be advanced in many other curriculum areas during the life of this project, such as language, social studies, and business mathematics. The connection with general school curriculum will be actively promoted as students gain prophecy with the new technology, and utilize the Internet and e-mail as research tools. Materials of special interest will also be downloaded by students and used to supplement the school resource center vertical files, leading to more up-to-date print holdings.

Intended Learning Outcomes for Technology Education:

There are four general program aims:

• Nature of Technology
• Technological Impact
• Technological Literacy
• Technological Communication

Students Will:

• Develop a degree of proficiency in the use of the Internet and e-mail.
• Learn strategies to employ communications technology in building new knowledge from existing knowledge.
• Learn a vocabulary of terminology and language related to selected communications technologies.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the basic communications principals of encoding and decoding, transmitting and receiving, and storing and retrieving.

  Resource Connections

This will be the first time many students will be able to access the Internet. As this course seeks to have students develop entrepreneurial plans based on "real world" concerns, it is absolutely essential that they have access to the most important tool available today for investigating, communicating, and marketing. Given the nature of the course and its stated objectives, Enterprise Education 3205 cannot be taught as it should without a Stellar Schools Internet Connection. To teach the course without such as resource can only lead to poorer projects than need be, especially in a small, isolated community such as ours, where students have little other opportunity to avail of modern technology.

Other Resources:

• 17 computer workstations feeding off a single Windows NT/Windows 95 platform.
• Various word processing, graphic design, and spreadsheet programs.
• Library print resources, supplemented by material sent to the school by fax from various agencies, videos, and guest speakers (making presentation on both enterprise matters and technology applications).

  Evaluation

Project will be evaluated through:

• Student achievement of the previously listed project learning outcomes.
• An estimation of the extent to which students use and avail of these new strategies and tools in collecting information relevant to their projects obtained through an examination of their progress with their business plans during the course of the project.
• Group and individual discussion of problems and pleasant discoveries.