Text Box: Volume 2 Issue 2 Text Box: Students with technology skills have the advantage when going out into today’s competitive job market. Many Computer Applications Program minors have written me after they graduated to tell me their CAP minor impressed potential employers and played a part in getting a job. I am on sabbatical this semester to explore another avenue for students to have that edge when they graduate from Cortland – Microsoft Certification. I am working on is the Office Specialist certification. It consists of taking tests in each of the key Office suite applications – Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and Outlook. The tests are timed and I have found you have to “know your stuff” to do well. The help options are not Text Box: available including the toolbar screen tips that tell you what the icon does when you pass the mouse over the icon. Most tests take 45 minutes and once you answer a question there is no going back. The tests are pass/fail and most require an 80-85 to pass. The reward for passing is a certificate from Microsoft. Another part of my sabbatical is to assess whether the curriculum of the various CAP courses cover the skills tested on the Microsoft Office Specialist exams. We don’t want to teach to the tests, but we need to find a way for students who are interested in the tests to pick up skills not specifically covered in class, as well as practice skills they may have learned but not used over Text Box: the course of time. SAM (Skills Assessment Manager), an automated testing and training software package currently used by CAP100 students, meets that need. It has a set of practice tests based on the Office Specialist exams. Students can view their test results and link directly to training modules for questions they answered incorrectly. I am also exploring what it would take for Cortland to become an authorized testing center for Cortland students. This would make it easier for students to take the test after taking a specific class when the material is still fresh and save them the hassle of fitting a testing centers test schedule to their schedule. Text Box: was the sponsor for this program. The students were able to ask questions and see Dr. McLaren as well as hear his responses via the internet connection on a large television screen. Dr. Peter McLaren is Professor of Education at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He has presented distinguished lectures at a number of North American universities and continues to speak and write from a transdisciplinary perspective in four areas for which he has become well-known internationally: critical pedagogy, multicultural education, critical ethnography, and critical theory. He is the author, co-author, editor and co-editor of approximately forty books and monographs. Several hundred of his articles, chapters, inter Text Box: On April 17th SUNY Cortland made a long reach across the continent and brought a distinguished teaching professor at UCLA, Dr. Peter McLaren, into a classroom on our campus. This was the first academic use here of Internet based video conferencing with this newly acquired technology. The cooperative efforts of Administrative Computing and Classroom Media Services recently brought this video conferencing over IP equipment into functioning status here at SUNY Cortland. Dr. Stephanie Urso Spina's Int. 270, Exploring Education class in our Sperry Building interviewed their distinguished guest "face to face" while he sat in a comfortable chair at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. Cortland's Urban Recruitment of Educators (C.U.R.E.) program Text Box: views, reviews, commentaries and columns have appeared in dozens of scholarly and professional journals Dr Spina's students enjoyed their hour long conversation with Dr. McLaren and showed great enthusiasm for the opportunity. This new internet videoconferencing eliminates the per hour phone company line charges and helps make this type of connection very affordable. Those interested in exploring the possibilities of using this technology to enhance their efforts here on campus can contact Bob Babcock in Classroom Media Services at ext. 4894 Text Box: Page # Text Box: Sabbatical Project – Microsoft Certification by Gretchen Douglas Text Box: Internet based video conferencing By Bob Babcock Text Box: “Exploring the possibility of the College becoming an authorized testing center”
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