Voices of Readiness Podcast

The Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship presented by Certiport is a global competition that tests students' skills on Microsoft Office Word, Excel® and PowerPoint®. Top students are invited to represent their respective countries at the MOS World Championship. It's an incredible achievement for students and educators to compete in this fantastic event. However, many teachers are left wondering, "How do I get my students prepared?" Well, wonder no longer!

In this week's episode, we sat down with educator and MOS Championship veteran, Patty Eckelman. Patty Eckelman is a Business Instructor at Auburn Mountainview High School for the Auburn School District #408 in Washington state. She's been teaching for 31 years, working in four different schools, and has been working with the Microsoft Office Specialist certification program since 2001. In short, Patty knows her stuff.

If you're interested in bringing students to compete in the MOS Championship, this episode is for you. We talked with Patty how to get students prepared with top knowledge and top scores, how to fund your travel, and how to prepare students with the soft skills they need to enjoy and capitalize on this incredible experience.

Interested in learning more about the MOS Championship? Get all the details at www.moschampionship.com. You can find details about the MOS US National Championship at www.moschampionship.com/us. You can also learn more about Patty (and all our amazing CERTIFIED Ambassadors) here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/May/Meet-the-CERTIFIED-Ambassadors.

Podcast edited and managed by Haili Murch LLC. If you are interested in starting a podcast or you are currently a podcaster needing help managing or relaunching your podcast, you may email Haili Murch at [email protected] or you can click here to book a call: https://calendly.com/hailimurch/podcast-discovery-call

We're so happy to be back after our summer hiatus. We've missed our wonderful educators and listeners. To kick off the school year, we're diving into a series of interviews with our CERTIFIED Ambassadors. We're starting off the school year with Greg King.

Greg King is a Computer Assisted Design Instructor at McCann Technical School in North Adams, Massachusetts. Prior to leaping into a teaching career, Greg was a Senior Mechanical Designer/Project Manager for HVAC projects in both the design build and plan-spec marketplace. Greg has been an Autodesk student & user since 1997 with a primary focus on AutoCAD and Revit.

Greg has an A.S. in Engineering Technology, and holds several accreditations including LEED AP O+M, WELL AP, Fitwel Ambassador, Autodesk AutoCAD Certified User, as well as a MA Construction Supervisor License to name a few.

In this episode, we chat with Greg about all things engineering. You've probably heard the joke, "Engineers aren't boring people. They just get excited over boring things." But, that doesn't have to be true. Engineering doesn't need to be boring, and Greg is out to change that perception with his students.

Listen for Greg's ideas to make engineering the coolest class at your school. He covers some of his favorite tools and topics, plus assignments that didn't go down as well as he'd hoped. Find out how to make engineering and design come alive!

If you'd like to connect with Greg for additional ideas (or just to geek out over engineering), you can reach him at [email protected]. You can also watch for more of Greg's ideas from our webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyqbVGcKDdY. You can also read more about Greg on the blog: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/April/Educator-Engineers-a-Brighter-Future-with-ACU-Cert.

Podcast edited and managed by Haili Murch LLC. If you are interested in starting a podcast or you are currently a podcaster needing help managing or relaunching your podcast, you may email Haili Murch at [email protected] or you can click here to book a call: https://calendly.com/hailimurch/podcast-discovery-call

Certified: Certiport Educator Podcast will be taking a break for the summer. This is our last episode before our break until we return on August 24th. Thanks for listening and have a great summer!

Each year, we have the honor and privilege of selecting an Educator of the Year. The 2022 CERTIFIED Educator of the Year is Carol York.

Carol is a Business Education teacher at Cary High school in Cary North Carolina. After many years of experience in private industry, Carol has been teaching for 12 years. She has been teaching project management for 8 years and was on the curriculum development team for both project management one and two for the state of North Carolina. She's recently earned her PMI Project Management Ready certification, which adds to her MOS Expert certification and National Board Teacher certification.

In this episode, we talk about Carol's experience as an educator and her special key to helping students succeed. Find out how she forms connections with her students that last well beyond the classroom.

You can read more about Carol here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/June/Carol-York-2022-CERTIFIED-Educator-of-the-Year.

You can also learn about Carol and her fellow CERTIFIED Ambassadors here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/May/Meet-the-CERTIFIED-Ambassadors.

According to reports from Burning Glass, nearly 2.3 million job postings in the last year have requested project management skills, which is great news for teachers looking to help their students find jobs immediately upon graduation. Plus, project management instills additional skills such as time management, communication, and teamwork; all soft skills that are highly demanded by today's employers.

In this episode, we sat down with one of our amazing CERTIFIED Ambassadors, Carol York. Carol York is a Business Education teacher at Cary High school in Cary North Carolina. After many years of experience in Private industry, Carol has been teaching for 12 years. She has been teaching project management for 8 years and was on the curriculum development team for both project management one and two for the state of North Carolina. She's recently earned her PMI Project Management Ready certification, which adds to her MOS Expert certification and National Board Teacher certification.

Carol discusses her journey into teaching project management, and why these skills are applicable for all students. With a 100% certification pass rate this year, Carol has helpful ideas for how you can help your students buy into project management.

You can learn more about the PMI Project Management Ready certification here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Certifications/pmi/Certifications/Overview. For advice on how to build a project management program at your school, check out this blog post: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2021/April/Building-a-Successful-Project-Management-Program.

Back in February, we sent out a call to have educators apply to become CERTIFIED Ambassadors. We wanted to create a group of education experts that you can connect with for support and ideas all year round! We received hundreds of applications, and it was incredibly difficult to choose only ten.

After much deliberation, we're proud to present our CERTIFIED Ambassadors for 2022. Stay tuned for future podcast episodes, blog posts, and CERTIFIED Educator Community content from these incredible educators.

Get ready to meet our CERTIFIED Ambassadors at the CERTIFIED Educator Conference in Dallas on June 20-22. Register for CERTIFIED at https://certified.certiport.com/.

As part of our IT Specialist Academy training, we held a webinar addressing computational thinking. This one was so good, that we just had to share it here as well. We were lucky enough to feature two of our new CERTIFIED Ambassadors on this episode: Tracey Sigers and Damiano Mastandrea.

Tracey Sigers is the Department Chair of Information Technology at the National Center for Urban Solutions in Columbus, Ohio. Tracey holds an MBA with an emphasis in technology leadership, a bachelor's degree in information technology, and an associate degree in technology. Tracey has twenty years of business background in computer systems management, college study skills, and Microsoft software experience. She's eager to bring students into the twenty-first century using enthusiastic and dynamic teaching to help them become lifelong learners.

Damiano Mastrandrea is a Career and Technical Education Director at the Brooklyn STEAM Center. He manages the CTE portfolio of the school to ensure that they are highly relevant and rigorous. He also strategizes various career readiness approaches through workplace immersion programs supported by data-driven decisions. Damiano is a big believer in changing education as a system that works for everyone instead of the selected few and pursuing education to all corners. His passion for education has led him to earn three college degrees including a doctorate, as well last 26 industry certifications. When he has a free moment, Damiano likes to write short stories, play games, and, if he's feeling daring, bake!

We sat down with Tracey and Damiano to learn more about computational thinking. According to ComputationalThinking.org, these skills are increasingly critical for individuals and organizations as the use of computation becomes more central to every activity and every innovation. In this episode, we took a deep dive into computational thinking. Our guests taught us more about what it is, why it's valuable for students, and how you can teach this industry-demanded skillset in the classroom.

You can learn more about the IT Specialist Computational Thinking certification exam here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Certifications/ITSpecialist/Certification/Certify.

You can also watch this, and other IT Specialist Academy trainings here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2022/April/IT-Specialist-Academy-2022.

Technology is pervasive in every aspect of life, including art and creative education. Artist and educator, Rob Duarte, has seen the impact of technology on creators firsthand.

Rob is an Associate Profession in the Department of Art at Florida State University, teaching courses in sculpture, digital fabrication, physical computing, and mechatronic art. He also serves as Co-Director of the FSU Facility for Arts Research and Director of the REBOOT laboratory.

He earned an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego, a BFA in Sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design, and BS in Business Information Systems with a minor in Computer & Information Science from the University of Massachusetts. At UCSD, Rob was an Ujima Scholar and a San Diego Fellow.

Rob's work has been exhibited in venues as diverse as the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the New Children's Museum, and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He has also been invited to exhibit his work as part of the Florida Art Prize in Contemporary Art, the San Diego Art Prize, and the southXeast Triennial.

In this special episode, we got Rob's opinion on the impact of technology on today's creators. He also discussed how to bridge that gap between artists and engineers, and how he takes things back to basics in his classroom with mediums like cardboard and scissors. And finally, find out how he helps students become technology creators, not just consumers.

You can learn more about Rob here: https://robduarte.com/. Check out what's happening at FSU at https://artsresearch.fsu.edu/ and https://art.fsu.edu/.

After two (very) long years of hiatus, we're so happy that CERTIFIED 2022 will be back as an in-person event! For many of us, it's been a while since we've been able to attend an in-person conference. We wanted to give everyone a refresher on what you can expect at our annual CERTIFIED Educator Conference.

For this episode, we sat down with Tommy Demos and Eric Cornish, two of our esteemed CERTIFIED alumni. Eric Cornish is a full-time design Professor based in Miami, Florida. Professor Cornish is an active design professional and educator for nearly 20 years. He is also an Adobe Education Leader (AEL) and Adobe Digital Design Specialist. He truly believes that "Creativity is not exclusive; it is a fundamental human activity."

Professor Tommy Demos is a full-time, tenured Professor of Film, Television & Digital Production in the School of Entertainment & Design Technology at Miami Dade College (MDC) in Miami, FL. Since 2011, he has taught over 130 sections of college-level courses in video editing, motion graphics, and animation and is currently pursuing a PhD in Leadership Studies with a concentration in Information Systems.

We discussed their memories from our last CERTIFIED Conference in 2019, how CERTIFIED impacted them and their students, and how educators can find funding to attend this, and any other, professional development conference. If you're on the fence about attending CERTIFIED, then this episode is for you.

You can read more about, and register for, CERTIFIED here: https://certified.certiport.com/.

If you're interested in learning more about Tommy and Eric's work at Miami-Dade, check out their full success story here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2020/May/Miami-Dade-College-Unleashes-the-Power-of-Adobe.

Microsoft certification gives students and workforce candidates the power to chart their own course, fulfill their ambition, and realize their potential. In this episode, we sat down with students who earned their MOS certifications and educators who teach MOS in their classroom. We discussed how MOS certification impacts students in the classroom, and in their careers. Covering everything from confidence to helping companies save thousands of dollars, we know you'll be on the MOS bandwagon after listening to this episode, which comes from a pre-recorded webinar.

Meet our guests!

Ashley Masters was a two-time competitor at the MOS U.S. National Championship, won two national championships for MOS Word and Excel through Future Business Leaders of America and was a student ambassador at the 2018 MOS World Championship. She's been passionate about certification since the first day she took an exam and is always eager to share how certification has transformed her life. She even launched her own certification program in her college town in 2019. She's earned 13 certifications and certification has played a large role in getting her dream job at Microsoft at 19 years old. Ashley is currently continuing her education at Washington State University, while still working full-time at Microsoft, to complete her Masters of Business Administration and is exactly one year out from graduating! You can read more about Ashley's start with MOS certification here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2017/September/MOS-Certification-Got-Me-a-Job-at-15.

Our second guest is Bruce Beuzard IV. Bruce currently works as an IT System Administrator at Oracle. Before working at Oracle, Bruce worked as a Datacenter Technician for Amazon Web Services. In 2019, Bruce was named the MOS U.S. National Excel Champion, and is passionate about the power of certification. You can read about Bruce's story here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2020/August/MOS-Champion-Climbing-the-Ranks-at-Amazon.

Next up is Laurene Klassen. Laurene is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Senior Manager of IT Training and Communications at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She took her first MOS exam in 2010 for personal development and has been hooked ever since. In 2017, she spearheaded the MOS program at SMU. Their program has certified over 3,000 students within 4 years. Laurene oversees the administrative side of their program and frequently teaches Office workshops to students. She is a native of Massachusetts but now calls Texas her home.

And finally, we have Joseph Reed. Joseph is currently in his 22nd year as a Business Education teacher. Of those 22 years, 18 years have also been spent as the head boy's basketball coach, yearbook sponsor, FBLA and Deca sponsor. He also serves as the Recreation Director of Rutherford County outside of the school system. He attended MTSU for his Bachelors degree and Cumberland University for his Master's degree.

Learn more about MOS certification here: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Certifications/Microsoft/MOS/Overview.

Learn more about the MOS World Championship here: https://www.moschampionship.com/.