Orlando, Florida

Breakout Session 1: How to Prepare for a Successful Testing Day

Have you ever spent weeks and countless instruction time preparing students for certification exams for it to turn into a disastrous and frustrating event the day of certification? Join Certiport Global Deployment Director, Jason Majors to learn how to turn certification day into a smooth success. Jason, who is also a former educator, will share information about some of the enhancements to Compass and what that means for you. He will also share how to make sure your lab and students are prepared for certifications, so that your main concern will be how to celebrate your students' successes!

For: K-12 and higher education teachers, administrators, and IT specialists

Breakout Session 2: Going Beyond Debits and Credits – Teaching QuickBooks for Certification Success

Whether you are an accounting whiz or novice, this breakout session will give you everything you need to get started teaching QuickBooks. Get tips from CPA and Senior Lecturer Jennifer Johnson on how to use and teach QuickBooks in the classroom or online. She has helped more than 200 students obtain their certification since 2015, and in this breakout session, she’ll review the QuickBooks certification exam and show you how to help students prepare for the exam and achieve similar results.

For: K-12 and higher education teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 3: MOS + ESB + CSB = The Perfect Storm for Employability

Imagine you’re a business owner and an eighteen-year-old applicant comes in with industry-proven expertise in the most current Microsoft Office software, an industry certification in Entrepreneurship and Small Business procedures, and a passing score on an industry certification test dealing with Communication Skills for Business. This applicant has all the skills you are constantly seeking: software expertise, terminology knowledge, business-specific math skills, soft skills, and clear written and oral communication. You can’t offer them a job fast enough! This breakout session will put you in the captain’s seat to learn about this perfect storm of certifications. Business Education Teacher Jennifer Stubblefield places high value on both energy and enthusiasm in her professional and personal life, so be ready to explore these new skills yourself while picking up tips and tricks on how to teach this content with practicality and enthusiasm.

For: K-12 and higher education teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 4: When the Student Becomes the Master - Building Helpful and Technology-Confident Students

For Computer Education Teacher Nichole Ross, her sixth-grade students are expected to learn relationship building skills along with computer skills. Going beyond set standards, she has her students create travel presentations in PowerPoint, family budgets in Excel, and school event flyers in Word to see how they can use their growing computer skills outside the classroom. But it’s not all business. They also do scavenger hunts, play Excel bingo, and create games in PowerPoint to stay immersed in the user-friendly software. Her students are so comfortable using these tools that when a fellow teacher asks for technical assistance, Ms. Ross assigns a student to the task and the student is able to assist them with their technical need. Come to this breakout session prepared to learn activities that you can use in your classroom.

For: K-12 teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 5: Coding in Minecraft - An Immersive and Engaging Computer Science Credentialing Program

Minecraft, the best-selling game of all time, is the perfect way to engage and excite young learners. In this session, led by Peter Doherty, you will learn how to leverage the creativity of Minecraft to deliver a powerful computer science and coding curriculum and credentials in K-12.

Coding in Minecraft is a computer science credential program with supporting curriculum, delivered through Minecraft: Education Edition. The pathway comprises four courses that immerse students in a Minecraft world to develop and prove their coding skills using MakeCode, JavaScript and, new for 2020, Python. The courses are standards aligned (CSTA and a Florida Digital Tool Certificate) and easy to teach no matter your coding or computer science experience. Upon completion students are ideally placed to progress onto industry recognized certification like Microsoft Technology Associate.

For: K-12 teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 6: The View from Above: An Admin's Perspective on Certification

Are you a district or school administrator who oversees industry certifications in your district? Are you a little (or a lot) overwhelmed with getting industry certifications in place, training teachers, helping students be successful, and analyzing all the data? Are you also trying to figure out how and where industry certifications fit in under Perkins V? CTE Coordinator Stacey Foster is too! Metro Nashville Public Schools has been implementing industry certifications, and in particular Certiport certifications, for the past seven academic years. In that time, they have learned what works (and what doesn’t). You’ll have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and hear about their best practices regarding selecting certifications and ensuring alignment with course standards, getting teacher buy-in and training, motivating students to participate, funding sources and Perkins V, and analyzing industry certification data to support teachers and to justify programs. You will leave this session feeling less alone, more empowered, and full of new ideas (that actually work!) to take back to your own districts or schools.

For: K-12 administrators

Breakout Session 7: Don't Fear the Function! Getting Students Engaged and Excited about Excel Certification

If your students are not mathematically inclined, they may stress about finding the right Excel function during a certification exam. Giving them knowledge will build the confidence they need to calm their nerves and allow them to see the value in the right function. Mary Beth Tarver will walk you through practice tasks so you can better teach your students how to determine the right function, find it on the formula bar, use the dialog boxes to determine what goes in them, answer the question, and then format the outcome. Have Microsoft Excel open so you can complete these tasks and get excited about functions like DATE/TIME, LOOKUP, or the amazing CUMIPMT (to realize how much interest you are paying).

For: K-12 and higher education teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 8: Certifications in the Classroom Give Students a Running Career Start

Want to boost your students’ success by helping them graduate with a certification in hand? Learn how to implement certifications directly in your classroom and build them into your class curriculum. By facilitating with theory and then applying concepts through application, students get both deep and practical knowledge—and a certification. Dean of Education Dr. Chitpasong Vazquez will share how she successfully runs a certification program with more than 1,500 students certified in MOS and MTA. With the right strategies to implement in-class certifications in your curriculum, you too can help thousands of students earn valuable certifications.

For: Higher education teachers and administrators

Breakout Session 9: Simulating Workplace Scenarios for Student Practice

How can you make sure students will be successful in the workplace? Put them in an authentic work setting. Adobe Education Leader and Teacher Erin Petry is joined by Career Technical Education Coordinator Deanna L. Canterbury-Penn to share their strategies in generating real-life experience in the classroom. By replicating proper business and industry processes and procedures, students leave school more prepared for the workforce. Take Park Avenue Prints, for example. This student-led and -managed Simulated Workplace at Nitro High School in West Virginia shows students how to use industry certifications in business workplace processes. This nearly real-life experience better prepares students for future jobs and careers.

For: K-12 teachers and administrators