Certified: Certiport Educator Podcast

According to a 2021 report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (https://itif.org/publications/2021/11/29/assessing-state-digital-skills-us-economy/), the United States needs to significantly increase its investment in workforce training, including for digital skills. Their report dove into the abilities of today's working-age Americans, and the results are shocking. One in si...

Have you signed up for CERTIFIED Academy: Business yet? If not, this is your sign to register and join us! CERTIFIED Academy: Business is an immersive online professional development program for business educators. This is your chance to learn from your fellow business educators and industry professionals.  From now until March, we'll be hosting training sessions to help you learn from business ed...

As a teacher, you want to know that the work you do makes a difference. Having students share their experience with certification helps you see the impact you have! During our latest Ask a Champion webinar, we were able to highlight one of our 2022 Adobe Certified Professional US Champions, Avery Blanchard. A current student at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, Avery has been immersed in des...

It's 2023 and a new year means new changes here at Certiport. We're so excited to kick-off the new year with our revamped professional development program. Get ready for CERTIFIED Academy! CERTIFIED Academy is an immersive online professional development program for educators. Combining the best of our former Certiport Academy and Bootcamp programs, CERTIFIED Academy is your chance to learn from y...

As a teacher, you want to know that the work you do makes a difference. Having students share their experience with certification helps you see the impact you have! During our latest Ask a Champion webinar, we were able to highlight our 2022 Adobe Certified Professional World Champion, Salma Sanchez.  Originally from the Dominican Republic, Salma only moved to the United States a couple years ago....

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , anxiety is on the rise among adolescents. By 2020, 5.6 million young people in the US had been diagnosed with anxiety. And nothing can trigger anxiety like testing day. Peak certification testing season is fast approaching, so we wanted to empower our educators with tactics to decrease your students' testing anxiet...

The COVID-19 pandemic exponentially increased the number of students taking online courses. However, many traditional teaching tactics don't transfer well to an online environment. If you're looking for techniques to create an engaging online class, our CERTIFIED Ambassador and veteran educator, Brandy Sevin has some ideas for you.  Ms. Brandy B. Sevin is from Raceland, LA, and has been an educato...

We're back again with another student success story. And who doesn't love a little inspiration from their podcast? Having students share their experience with certification helps you see the impact you have! Our Ask a Champion webinar series highlights former Microsoft Office Specialist and Adobe Certified Professional Championship competitors. We talk with them about their experiences at the comp...

As a teacher, you want to know that the work you do makes a difference. Having students share their experience with certification helps you see the impact you have! During our latest Adobe Certified Professional Academy webinar, we were able to highlight two former Adobe Certified Professional Championship competitors.  Acquille Dunkley found his passion for the arts at 15 years old and has been c...

Want to prepare high school students for the App Economy? In this week's episode, we are highlighting a past webinar we held for Month of Swift. We were privileged to learn from Virginia educator, Alex Leonard. Alex holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a Master's Degree in School Law and Policy Studies, and has been an educator of computer science courses for over 16 years. He's taugh...

As a teacher, you want to know that the work you do makes a difference. Having students share their experience with certification helps you see the impact you have! Our new Ask a Champion webinar series highlights former Microsoft Office Specialist and Adobe Certified Professional Championship competitors. We talk with them about their experiences at the competition, how their teachers helped them...

The Adobe Certified Professional World Championship presented by Certiport is a global competition that tests students' design skills using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Top students are invited to represent their respective countries at the World Championship where they will create a designated design project for Certiport's chosen nonprofit client. It's an incredible achievement for...

As an educator, it's easy to get into a silo. Having a demanding teaching schedule can make collaborating and connecting with other educators seem impossible. However, those who reach outside the classroom can learn valuable lessons from other educators and expand their available resources. And Denise Spence has the experience to prove it.  Denise Spence has been an educator for almost 25 years. S...

According to a 2022 study by the CDC, 37% of U.S. high schoolers have faced mental health struggles amid the COVID pandemic. These struggles highlight students' need for a positive, welcoming environment during the new school year. We couldn't think of a better guest to discuss positivity than CERTIFIED Ambassador, Abner Soto-Henry.  Abner Soto-Henry has taught information technology education for...

According to research from JP Morgan Chase & Co, over 99 percent of America's 28.7 million firms are small businesses. In fact, the vast majority (88 percent) of employer firms have fewer than 20 employees. Preparing your students to be effective employees means preparing them to be entrepreneurs.  We couldn't think of a better time to talk about entrepreneurship and design thinking than during ou...

There's nothing more gratifying as a teacher than watching your student excel. Finding ways to engage and challenge students requires effort and creativity. To help spark some ideas, we brought in Katie Watchorn.  Katie is a Digital Business Education Career & Technical Education Instructor at the Sault Area High School's Career Center. She discovered her passion for teaching while living in Italy...

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, "urban educators report the growing challenges of educating urban youth who are increasingly presenting problems such as poverty, limited English proficiency, family instability, and poor health." Overcoming these obstacles and educating young people in urban areas can prove challenging. However, Tracey Sigers wants to change the narrative...

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 wo...

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 c...

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 Car...

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 employe...

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 fu...

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...

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 Fac...