Rank: Newbie Groups: Member
Joined: 8/17/2013 Posts: 0 Location: Great Lakes Bay Region
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I heard Woodworks Career Alliance this my State Professional Organization Conference (Michigan Industrial & Technology Educators Society). Just curious what your experiences are with it.
"M.I.T.E.S. Works for All kids" http://on.fb.me/14918EO Michigan Industrial & Technology Education Society (M.I.T.E.S.) Member Since 2009 Industrial Education Instructor since 2012
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Rank: Newbie Groups: Member
Joined: 6/1/2006 Posts: 0 Location: Connecticut
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As far as I can tell The WCA is either a failed effort that no one has bothered to officially bury, or it's a scam. Here are my experiences with WCA:
Thinking that by aligning my curriculum with the skill standards set by this organization I could better justify my program, I ordered a hard copy of their "Manufacturing Skills Standards" book. At $75 this book was ridiculously expensive and as it turns out a complete waste of money. The edition I bought (V1.0) wasn't even complete. Entire sections were left blank because they were still being developed, and what was there was so daaa obvious that it left me feeling duped. They should never have charged money for a work in progress.
That notwithstanding, I still hoped that aligning my curriculum with a nationally accredited program (even a lame one) would lend my program the validity that I was looking for to help justify my program's existence, so I forged on. The next thing that I did was to contact the good folks at WCA to see if I could sign up to receive the training to become a certified WCA skills assessor. In theory this would have allowed me to award WCA credentials to my students as they mastered specific woodworking skills. These efforts went exactly nowhere. I spoke with my local trainer several times but he never would arrange for a specific time and place where I could go to receive my training. He was always very clear about how much money he wanted up front, but everything else was always alarmingly vague. The further I delved into this the more it began to feel like an elaborate scam. Has anybody else out there had a more positive experience with this organization?
Keith Landin Woodshop instructor, Woodstock Academy "Mens tua sit implementum acerrium in fabrica"
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