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PowerPoints, pacing guides, objective mappings... where do you begin?
In this session, we have asked seven instructors from K12 to higher education to participate and share their ideas about how they use the TestOut Teaching Aids and provide some other helpful tips as well.
Join our training specialists Stevie George and Allan Escobar as they meet with our customers Bob Bunge (WA), Dorothy Lyon-Lee (OK), John Williams (SC), Mary Worley (IL), Monika Masuda (MO), Scott Adams (AR), and Tony Kindwall (MO) as they share what teaching aids they use and how these aids have helped them in the classroom.
Full Transcription*:
Stevie George
Welcome to our Teachers Lounge today. We're so happy to have you join us. I'm Stevie, and I'm part of the training team a CertMaster . Joining me today, of course, is Allan, who's our other training specialist. I'm going to initially start by briefly introducing our guest instructors, and then Allan is going to provide some more detail about our topic. Joining us today, we have Bob Bunge, from North Seattle College in Washington. We also have Dorothy Lyon-Lee from Metro Technology Centers in Oklahoma. We have John Williams, from Beaufort County, South Carolina. Next, we have Mary Worley from Whiteside Area Career Center in Illinois. Now we have Monika Masuda from Lex La-Ray Technical Center in Missouri. We have Scott Adams from Southeast Arkansas College, of course, in Arkansas. And finally, we have Tony Kindwall from Boonslick Technical Education Center in Missouri. Thank you guys so much for joining us today and Allan we have a lot more instructors joining us today. Let's have you talk about our topic and why we have a larger group with us.
Allan Escobar
Great. Thank you Stevie and you are right. We are so excited to have all of these instructors join us today to talk about the CertMaster teaching aids that are provided for every product in CertMaster . And so, before we get started with our roundtable discussion about these teaching aids, I'd like to first show everyone where we can find these teaching aids. And it's funny because jokingly I like to call them CertMaster 's not-so-secret, best-kept secret, but really it's not a big secret. Let me show you where to find those. In order to get to the teaching aids, you have to first login to your CertMaster account. Next, you'll come up here to the My Products tab, and this is where you'll be able to have access to the different products that you have. And just over to the left down here, we have a Teaching Aids button for every product in the course. So you'll notice that I have one for this product, another one for that one, and it goes down the list and I have those teaching aids for every product. Now, when we click on this button, it will take us out to the different teaching aids that we have available. And we'll be talking about each of these activities, and how these instructors use these resources that we have provided. But just to name a few, we have some instructor PowerPoints, course outlines, some lesson plans, and these are all really helpful as people are preparing students, preparing their classes for the semester, and for many other reasons. We're going to go ahead and get started by talking to Monika, and she's going to talk to us about how she uses the TestOut teaching aids to help prepare for her classes. Let's go ahead and turn the time over to Monika now.
Monika Masuda
Thank you. I wanted to talk about how I use the pacing guide. It is, to me, the most wonderful teaching aid that CertMaster has prepared for us. I used it for the first time last fall, and it was fantastic. So, I would like to show you what I did. The first thing, I was a little bit confused about what I was supposed to do with the weeks because when I looked up here where it will allow me to select different weeks. There was nothing there that would fit my program. I went back to a calendar and decided that there were 30 weeks in my program. And so I went over here to TypicalWeeks, and I simply changed the 36 over here, and I changed that to 30. And went back over here to the WeeklyBreakdown, and then I was able to select the 30 weeks. So I found that really neat.
Then there are certain things that I wanted to omit from my pacing guide because I wasn't sure how the year was going to go. I was afraid we were going to be out of school in terms of maybe having to shut down, go virtual, and so on due to COVID. And so I actually used the objective mapping to check and see what I needed essentially, in order to get my students through and get them to the certification. I figured, if I couldn't get through all of those things, then I can come back and cover things that are omitted if time allows us to do that. And so I just simply unchecked everything that is on here. It is so simple to use. You just simply can control click and check the different chapters. Then, it automatically fills the pacing guides for you.
Allan Escobar
Great, have any of you had any other experiences using this course Pacing guide, anything else that you'd like to add about that?
Scott Adams
On mine, I’m at the two-year level, I don't actually do the Network Pro until the end. It's more of a review to make sure my students got everything out of the program. But I actually pull the pacing guide and the different pieces for the different classes. At the beginning of my whole program my students get it, and they can go through and go, “Oh, in this class I’m going to learn these pieces and in this class I’m going to learn these pieces.” And so, by the time they get to the end where they're going to take the Network Pro, they've been able to see where all of this [is]. So, when they're reviewing, they know, “Oh, I got this information out of this class. I got this information out of that one.” And so, it helps my students over the entire two years know where they're at and where this information is going to come from.
Tony Kindwall
I use it similar to what Scott just said too. I'm the only instructor but we do things in different orders and kids come in and out at different times. I use it to predict what we're going to do for the next four weeks or next six weeks or so. So, it's very useful now, and I appreciate it being there.
Mary Worley
I've used it. When I first came to Whiteside, my classes were set up to be yearlong classes, so the course guide helped a lot. With me switching over to semester based and since my courses are tied in for dual credit for the local college here, it makes it easier to get things covered in 16 weeks. But I agree, with Monika also, when I know it was kind of crunch time, because of COVID, and things like that, I started, “OK, we can come back to this.” It kind of served a dual phone purpose with helping me make sure I'm on track with that 16-week schedule. But at the same time, hitting on the essentials first.
John Williams
Something I found that was very workable. I really liked the pacing guide as an overview. But then the other tool I liked were the lesson plans, where it had the actual minutes as a guideline. Not a hard, fast rule. But it gave me a much better understanding. So, I could handle two sections at once given a timeframe. Or it allowed me to be flexible and expand maybe over two days of particular lessons or section.
Bob Bunge
One thing we do in my college district is when we adopt a new course, we have to go through a process and get a master course outline approved. And that includes things like catalog description, curriculum, objectives, mappings, certificates, and things like that. And so, I borrowed liberally from the TestOut instructional guides in order to create that language during the adoption process.
Scott Adams
Those course objectives, those are amazing when you're having to create. I'm like Tony, I'm the only instructor for my program, and I've got to create 16 classes. And you've got to create all these objectives. And all this stuff. Of course, nobody knows your program. They just know that objectives are supposed to look a certain way. Those helped tremendously with being able to say, “OK, here's an objective my students need to know.” Just pick it up, and I'm done.
John Williams
Instead of what they need to know, we're at SSBAT: students should be able to perform a certain skill set. And that objective translates very readily into that skill set, where we can demonstrate that. I sat on the committee for South Carolina, for several times to outline courses, and set both the “what was required of the student”, but required of the student is both a knowledge base and skill base. And so, borrowing liberally from CertMaster in the lesson plans as well as the pacing guide, that met all the criteria. It was chapter and verse. It solved a lot of issues and answered a lot of concerns because just as Mister Adams said, nobody knows what you are doing. But they know that you're supposed to meet a certain format. And by having that format in a one sentence or a few words, then you meet that criteria and then move on and that doesn't become objectionable.
Monika Masuda
I use the objectives as well. Each week has to have weekly objectives up on the board. So, when our administrators walk in, and the objectives are not up, it’s not good. So, I use these objectives to put up on the board. I also use the focused questions an awful lot. Those are extraordinarily helpful. When we start class, this is something that the students can do. I post them in Google Classroom. And this is something that students can answer when they first walk into the classroom and that helps with bell to bell teaching that they are stressing in our school.
John Williams
I concur. And, I've used Kahoot and Quizlet to take those same questions again. And it's not one and done. You have to hit that repeatedly. But it allows the student to have it in a format that's not a trite, “Oh, here it is. Here it is, again.” Now it's competitive. So, they are looking to score more points than the other person in the Kahoot or they're looking to get a better overall score in the Quizlet. I also use that in the PowerPoints with Pear Deck that becomes interactive. So, I'll go through a couple of slides and then I'll pose that question. And then they'll have to go back to the video, review it to make sure if they don't get the right answer, then they go and look it up and see it and it's reinforced.
Scott Adams
Another thing I use the objectives for, Arkansas does this and I'm sure some of y'all do too, but we have our advisory committee/our outside entities: the businesses, the schools, people that would use my students as employees. And I have 15 people on an advisory committee and their big interest is “I have a student who graduated from our program. What are the things are supposed to know?” One of the nice things about the objectives is, I'm able to lay those out with the classes they're in, and say, “Here are the things that they're going to learn in this class, and not just learn in the book. They're going to physically be able to do these things.” And this is what my pack absolutely loves. One of their big questions when we meet every semester is, “How is this class meeting objectives? What are you doing to satisfy those and how we're working with them? So those really helped me to work with my advisory committee and show them how we're meeting their needs.
Allan Escobar
That's great. Thank you so much, everyone, for those great comments about how to prepare your classes using the course pacing guide, the lesson plans, the objective mappings, and others of those aids that you have mentioned. I want to move over into some of the class activities that you’ve mentioned before. I know Mary you said that you use the instructor PowerPoints to teach in your class and I think you've mentioned using Pear Deck. I believe John you said that as well. Could you talk to us a little bit more about Pear Deck and how you use that with the PowerPoint presentations?
Mary Worley
Sure. One of the things that I used to do prior to the PowerPoint is I'd go through the videos and download the transcript. And I'd find the notes for the videos and put them into the PowerPoints. Now, the speaker notes are in there for most of them. So, then I turned onto Pear Deck and decided to integrate that into the class so that it can become more interactive. Then I'd take those focus questions within the PowerPoint. What I do is have the Pear Deck in there. And the focus questions, just like everyone is mentioning, are inside of the PowerPoint at different points so that the students have to answer, and I can see their answers. I love Pear Deck for doing that. It's really great because you can just push them all together.
I'll show you here. Some of the questions I use are from the focus questions. I'll just start one and just let you see it. I do the instructor paced. As you are familiar with Pear Deck, it goes into the Join screen and all of that. From here, the students join in from the URL that's on the screen with Pear Deck. Then as I'm going through, I just review the terms. Just like I'm sure a lot of the teachers do. I just weave the questions in, disbursed throughout the presentation. For example, “When you purchase proprietary software after a few years you end up owning it? True or false.” Then they have the chance to answer. And, of course, we can show the responses, and talk about it. I just go through and do this. And I'm working through in all of the PowerPoints that I have, especially now that CertMaster is giving us more of that, which I love. It's great. I'm so glad to have that as a valuable resource.
Allan Escobar
That's so cool. And I actually really love Pear Deck. I hadn't heard about that before. But just seeing that it looks really cool and fun and interactive for the students. Anyone else, have any other comments that they'd like to share about PowerPoints?
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
My class is basically a certification class. And what I want the students to do is to earn their certifications. We start off with digital literacy, which is the Office. And then roll from IT Fundamentals, A Plus, Net Plus, and Security Plus. I start off and I have a CompTIA roadmap, and then I turn around and I tie it to, “Oh, here's the objectives for this certification. Ok well, these objectives will tie specifically to this chapter, chapter one, chapter three. Here is where you're going to find out about databases, about Python programming, or the infrastructure.” And that way I can tell them, “If you go through the whole course, you will pass this test.” And there are those who say, “Oh, well, I'm just going to do the test, or I'll just do the practice.” Well, then they don't pass and I say, “Well, what happened?” I said, “Well, let's look at your scores.” And being able to say, “Here's the objectives, these objectives tied specifically to these certifications. And this certification wants you to understand SQL, database, and the cloud. And here's where you're going to find it.” So, I try to incorporate it and have them use each other as accents. That's what I do with the objectives because I want them to get their national certs. Yeah, I love the CertMaster Pros. And that's the final. But if you get a certification, that is national, and that's resume work.
John Williams
One thing I've found in doing this for 25 years is, it's not what I can do, it's what my students can do. After I begin and model some of the Pear Deck and the PowerPoints, I will create teams of students. Somewhere in the nature of kind of like a fire squad: five students, team leader, assistant team leader, and three specialists. I’ll take that same team and translate them into competition, such as Cyber Patriot where they have to do those things. They'll create the PowerPoint. And what was introduced to us recently with one of our technical educators that help coach us in the use of alternate technology, was Flip Grid. I had a situation where students would start going to YouTube to see how the labs were done but “Ok, your spent 90 seconds on a lab and you make 100? OK, well, you may be that good, but how do I prove that?” Well, I get you to do Flip Grid, which is a video of that. And I start them doing the PowerPoints and so that I can input that same stuff into a Flip Grid. They’ll deliver it to me on Google Classroom. I'll move it into Pear Deck and then have them hit a particular topic and train the other teams on those subject matters. And then likewise, the other group will then train the others. So one group will do one lab, another group will do another lab and then they'll cross train each other.
Allan Escobar
I like that somebody once told me that teaching is learning twice. And so, that kind of makes sense to me where you have each other training until then it just kind of gets more ingrained into their brains. That's great. You know, it's interesting about these PowerPoints when I tell instructors about them and that we've created a PowerPoint presentation for every section of the course, everyone gets really excited. They always make sure to mention to them that you can make edits to these. So I’m just interested in knowing what kind of changes do you make. How do you customize these presentations to your own needs?
Scott Adams
I was going to bring up, if any of y'all have had some of the books, especially people who aren't necessarily technical people, they're more academic-side people. Some of these PowerPoints that come with some of these books, no offense, but they're hoarded. They're written from some doctoral and master's level. You're trying to teach entry level people, with a bunch of high points, that somebody wrote. And they go, “Well, everybody knows this.” And it's like, “No, they don’t, that's the point.” And so, I always had fits with having to rewrite all their PowerPoints and remake them. And when you all come out with PowerPoints, I'm able to take a lot of those again, just do a few tweaks, minor pieces to them and say, “OK, now I've got a set of PowerPoints that actually, what I'm teaching in a class, and what they're dealing with in CertMaster , it fits everything. And, that's what I'm able to do, is just a little bit of editing a little bit of tweaking and I have the set of PowerPoints that covers not only the material and teaching, but the, where it's coming from.
John Williams
I've found that that that's a very, very true statement. I let my students tweak the PowerPoints into language that they can understand. And then, I'll have them put their picture in it. So, the following year, they'll present that, and the kids will say, “Oh, yeah that's so and so. He looks better there than he does now.” It brings a lot of socialization along with that, but it also gives them a real common ground. And if there's a couple of misspellings, and a little bit of syntactical misalignment. I'll leave it in there because that's how it's understood.
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
John, that is so true. Students love to see the pictures of someone who has done what they're trying to do. And so, I have a wall of fame. And as I get their PC Pro or their A plus certification, I take a picture with them holding their cert and put that on the wall. And that is how we start the next year. And so they say, “Well, I know this guy, I went to school with him. Shoot, if he can do it, I can do it.” And it helps them realize the possibilities. I call it my wall of fame. Then once the second year is up, and I roll it into an 8 by 11-inch certificate that all of the names are on for that year. They like to see themselves and people that they know. I like your idea of the PowerPoint. It's a good one.
Mary Worley
Dorothy, I have the same name on my Wall of Fame. It's called the CT Wall of Fame. I don't have their pictures, but I have their certifications. I retire them after two years. I go two years back, so that the ones that are first year and second year, can see the students from their school that came through. But it's funny we had the same name for our wall of fame.
Monika Masuda
I have a wall of fame as well. I keep all the student certifications up on there. They are so thrilled when they get their name up there. I had one student who had to take, because of COVID, had to take his certification later than the other students. When he came back, he's like, “Mrs. Masuda, have you printed out my certification yet? It's got to go up there.
I don't see my name up there yet.” They get really excited about that.
Scott Adams
I've done that, except that I let my students, when they pass the cert, I let them put up their own. They come and put it up. And we have sections on our wall because we're only doing a certain number of certs. Every one they pass, they put their own cert. So, when they come back through, or if they're in an upper-level class and there are lower-level people, we have second year people that are coming in and share with first year people that, “See that one, you see that one, those are mine.” We have people that have graduated and come back to school and ask, “Is my cert still on the wall?” And, by the way, I know this is not under teaching aids, but those posters you pass out and send us. Those are amazingly inspirational. Especially that young guy with the Audi car because I know that story. I heard it at one of the get-togethers in Utah. My students love that story. I've had more than one say, “I want one of those, just like that.”
Allan Escobar
That's awesome. I really do love that. And now that we're on the topic of certification, I do want to get a little bit more into the objective mapping aid. How do you all use the objective mappings to help students to prepare for certification? And actually, I wanted to pass this over to Bob. I know Bob is one of our instructors from the higher education field. And so, Bob, how do you use this objective mapping?
Bob Bunge
I guess one thing that occurs to me is before we even have a class, we have to analyze industry trends and figure out which things to offer. Right now, we're at a change, where Microsoft has shaking up their certification program. There's some new things on the Horizon Cloud Plus, Cyber Ops Plus, and few other things. And so, we're faced with a decision of what are we even going to teach? Some of the criteria that would help us select a new area to target is their industry demand. But also, can we align the curriculum with a certification exam that's realistic for students to pursue? Also, we are, by the way, on a 10-week quarter system in the state of Washington, which is a little unusual. So, one thing I have to deal with all of the curriculum objectives and curriculum mapping is a lot of carpentry to figure out what fits into 10 weeks. Not every product can be done every chapter in 10 weeks. Sometimes we need to be selective, and so you have to prioritize which objectives are going to be the strongest priority. How can we spread things over to different quarters and so forth? So, long story short, when I'm trying to figure out how to parse the different content and how to adopt new courses, to track changing industry trends, it’s extremely helpful to have documentation in detail about what the week-by-week objectives are, what the learning activities are, and what the certification mappings are. Without that documentation, if I just had to go through the product and take my own notes, that would be incredibly time consuming. You will stand in the way of advancing what we're trying to do.
Scott Adams
I was going to add that I’m from the two-year level too, and I actually have an internship with several organizations outside of our school. That's one of the things we're able to do, is when the internship kicks in, when students are eligible for the internship, they're supposed be at a certain class level. One of the things I do is, ours fits with the PC Pro. They have to have the PC Pro to be eligible for the internship. The people that are using interns, have that objective map. So, they say, “When you start your intern, these are the things that you're supposed to know how to do. That objective map said, this is what you know how to do.” And so, the organizations using our interns can put them right to work, put them right in there, and get them going because they already know, “Hey, they know how to do this, and this, and this, and this. The know how to make a cable, and how to add a piece of software to a computer.” They already know that.
John Williams
When we were doing the state standards over the course of the past 18 years. The material that CertMaster provided in terms of an objective mapping, basically, that met the SANS criteria, that met the Cisco criteria, that met the Microsoft criteria. It met the CompTIA Criteria. So, with that relating to each one of those particular certifying bodies, it allowed us to conclude objectives into the standards. So that the objectives and the standards were simultaneous. We looked at CertMaster , which really gave us a path in terms of terminology and objective standards that we could apply to all of them. Then we had one of the biggest employers in South Carolina, is the military, they have been on our committee and with all of the subcontractors. It then translates into something that can fit seamlessly into their organization and their employment pathways.
Allan Escobar
I like that very much. Let's briefly move on to our course outline. And I want to ask this question actually, specifically to Tony. I know, Tony, you said that you use the course outline for instructional planning, how do you see course outline to help your students prepare for certification as well?
Tony Kindwall
I mainly use it to build a syllabus because it works out really well. Then it's also a guide to tell you where, what section, and which item? And I liked it a little better than the objective list just because it's a little bit more concise. A high school student likes the shorter words and the shorter sentences. So, if you're looking up a certain thing, well then, I know “ok that's in this chapter, this subsection, that way.” I don't modify much, and I have it posted but that's about all. It's mainly just for planning at the very beginning.
Allan Escobar
Great, thank you, Tony. Let's quickly actually go over to the accessibility documents. So, for those of you who don't know, we have some documents that are available for students with accessibility needs. How do you use those accessibility documents, if you do use them?
Scott Adams
We actually have a person on campus, when we have somebody with an accessibility issue, they go through and evaluate, and they send us documentation. It says, “This person has this issue.” Well, the problem is, they don't tell us what to do to help with that issue. And so, I'm able to take those down, print them out, and go to them with that student and say, “OK, here are some things I can do to work with you in this environment, with this certification, with these pieces.” And then, we can get a plan down, instead of just a document that says, “This person has a learning disability” and then “OK, figure it out.” Now we're able to build a plan that says, “OK, here's how we're going to meet your needs in this situation with that documentation to build that plan of how we're going to adapt this class.”
Monika Masuda
I had a student who was very, heavily autistic, and who had trouble sitting and watching the videos. And so, I printed much of the documents out for him. It helped him to put it in a notebook, and to read through the material, rather than sitting and listening to the material.
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
One of the things that I have promoted to my students this year is the ability to take advantage of their bus time. You know every one of them has [a cell phone]. But you can get CertMaster on these and they're plugged into their phone while they're on the bus. Like you say, Monika, they don't want to come to class and sit and listen to the videos on and on. But they have the ability to hear them anywhere with a smartphone. And that has worked really well with several of mine with attention deficit issues.
John Williams
In our region, we refer to those as accommodations and it's a capture all term. Being in a Title one school, there are a number of those as well. You mentioned it translates very quickly into something that can be worded into an accommodation. Basically, we're for it.
Bob Bunge
I just wanted to say that the main request for accommodation we get is more time on tests. CertMaster has an extremely convenient mechanism to go in and double or time and a half on the tests. It’s quite simple and it’s applied globally to everything in the student's account. So, if they come back and take a different course in the next quarter, the accommodation is still there. I found that extremely handy and convenient in responding to those accommodations.
Mary Worley
I was just going to comment on the bus ride thing. I mention that, too. It seems like we have a lot of similar things, Dorothy. Most of our students come in and they have at least a half hour to an hour commute on the bus. Like you said, you can't do the labs, but you can pull up those videos and listen for the ride home. I thought that was pretty neat. We both do that.
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
Yes. And it works well for the students. And one of the other things I like is that I no longer am buying textbooks because every three years you had to throw them out. So, now instead of getting textbooks, which the young people didn't read. And I have juniors and seniors and adults, it's a mixed class. They will listen to the video. They will read the fact sheets because they're short. It's not this 500-page book. I can come up with cost justifications to purchase CertMaster because I don't have to buy the books. If the student wants the book, they can get it so much cheaper from someplace other than the bookstore anyway, if they’ll get it online. That's one of the advantages of using CertMaster. It’s accessible, current, and has the ability to change. I mean, you already are ready for the next Security. That's the good part.
Allan Escobar
Back to the accessibility documents, I know John, you mentioned that you use these for reasons more than just helping students with accessibility needs. Do you want to talk a little bit more about how you use these to create graphic organizers and anchor charts, and other things of that sort?
John Williams
When you're looking at labs and accessibility documents, you're giving yourself a path of what skill to do. So, with what skill to do, you can create an anchor chart that says, “These are the procedures that you go through to accomplish that objective or that skill set.” Now, here's a visual graphic reminder of this screen to this screen, to the screen, to this screen, instead of words. Now that, in their mind translates, “Oh, OK. Well, I've seen that in the videos, I've seen that in how I do the labs.” So now, what we used to call muscle memory is now long term, meta cognitive because it's gone from short-term memory. We've passed it multiple times into long term memory. Now, the visual with color comes out like when I do the custom exams, I always include the labs in it. And so, [the students] are like, “OK, boom.” And then stitch it all the way through.
With graphical organizers, now we take words and we add them to pictures. So, when we're talking about different socket sets, different media devices, I can see the actual cable and now I know how to path it. I see what pins go to what. This is transmit, this is received. I start off with pin number one, to go to pin number eight and creating a UTP cable. I know it's 586 B because B stands for business, as opposed to A because most of our standards are going to be that. So, B to business and then, I know the color scheme. I know it's going to be stripes before solids, and then they'll pick it up.
Allan Escobar
All right, thank you, John. And so, we just have one more teaching aid that we want to cover, and those are the teaching aids that are specific to our Office Pro course. And we have two instructors who are teaching that currently. We have Mary and Dorothy, anything you'd like to talk to us about these teaching aids that we have for Office Pro?
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
For me, what is most effective is that the students can learn Office 19 and not have to have it on their home system because it's all in simulation. And that lets them have the hands-on experience without having the personal cost of buying it. The Office has worked well, and I use that as a segue into the Certiport IC3 certification. It works well for, obviously, key applications but IC3 has Living Online, as well as Computer Fundamentals. You put those all three together and your Office Pro works well on that. Sometimes I can't get people to pass these tests in an assessment center, but being able to do the Office Pro here in class or the PC Pro has worked really well.
Mary Worley
Office Pro is one of these least traveled roads in my class, I mean, it's starting to pick up a little bit more. But it's a nice alternative for the students that come in that don't necessarily want to do networking or security, but they still want to be in the class. They kind of start off that way in that they come in knowing of Word and PowerPoint but Excel is like the new one that they usually haven't used a lot. So, I incorporate the Capstone Projects into my class as well. We do those at the end of each section. We do the Word Capstone project, and we do Excel, and they always seem to learn new things with it. That's what I like about it. Prior to Office Pro I was using Desktop Pro Plus. When Office Pro came along, I was just like, “Oh boy, it's the updated version.” And I would also echo what Dorothy said too, that the not having to have it on your machine is very good for us. We used to have the subscription. Our director was paying for the license, and then he decided we can all use it online and get this for free over here. Then, we didn’t need the license, so we kind of lost that. The ability to have it in a controlled environment is really great.
Tony Kindwall
I have a question. I like posters in my classroom that show whether there's common hardware, common plugs, common operating system used, posters to decorate the room. And, I'm new to CertMaster . This is my first year and I don't have any posters, and then I heard somebody say there's posters, so, I might want some more information about that.
Allan Escobar
Definitely, we can get you posters. Why don't we finish off, just as a quick little final thing. Let's go ahead and go 1 by 1, and mentioned your favorite teaching aid, maybe in like a sentence or two, and why that is your favorite.
Mary Worley
I was just kind of looking through, and I'm like, “Favorite, it’s hard to choose.” I guess it's a tossup between the lesson plans and the course outline. I do like the PowerPoints also. So there's 1, 2, and 3. But I really do like the lesson plans because it helps with the scheduling of knowing where they should be. A lot of times, I allow my students to work ahead of us a little bit, so they can kind of see where they should be and teach them time management in the process.
Monika Masuda
I would have to say the lesson plans as well. It is very nice to look at them and be able to determine, “OK, this much time for this, and this much time for that.” And having the focus questions in there. I really do like the focus questions a lot. Also, in the beginning of the year, I really do appreciate the pacing guide. I use it and I fill it out and then I transfer it over to my calendar and then it pops up on my phone every day, “OK. This is what you're doing today.” So, this helps me an awful lot.
Scott Adams
The PowerPoints are probably my favorite. I like how the PowerPoints are done but then also the objectives. Again, it helps me communicate with everybody, the administration, my advisory group, all of those, without having to stop and go, “OK. How do I explain what we're doing?” So, it really, really helps.
John Williams
There’s an old statement that I've found that works hand in glove with the objectives. It’s “Put your cards on the table.” I've found that having your cards and your certification as a teacher, putting them on the table, to say, “This is what I've done. I expect that of you, and these are your objectives, and the skill sets that I can demonstrate to you, and these are the things that you can represent with that certification. And that certification has value.”
Bob Bunge
I'd have to say, overall, the course outline is the one that I go to the most. It is pretty critical for setting up a new quarter and setting up new courses. And just analyzing the curriculum in general.
Tony Kindwall
I like all of them, but I would say the PowerPoints are the ones I use every day. Those are my lifeline. So definitely, the PowerPoints.
Dorothy Lyon-Lee
What I use the most of is the PowerPoints. And I liked the fact that the images are not a copy of what they're going to see. When it comes to planning/organizing, the course outline. That's how I figure out the path for the year, and then the day to day is the PowerPoint.
Stevie George
Thank you guys so much. This has been such a productive session. I really appreciate all of the comments today. And, Allan, thank you for moderating that. As you can tell, we've had some great guests to give us some wonderful information that hopefully we'll be able to help you. We appreciate you being a part of CertMaster. And again, thanks everybody for participating.
*Comments were edited for length and clarity.