1. Pass out Permission Slips from Certiport to Be Signed by Parents

Microsoft Imagine Academy
How to Get started
Microsoft Office 2016

1. Pass out permission slips from Certiport to be signed by parents.

2. Have students log into Moodle class and enroll in the class.

3. Get the students’ Unique Identifier Code. Your office should have these. They are the numbers the state of Michigan identifies students. From what I can see, it is how they are attached to your licenses.

4. Register the students in Certiport. You can register them without the UIC codes, but then you have to go back and put them in. They cannot take the test without them.

5. Have students get a Microsoft Login. Directions are in this folder. Or you can create them at

6. The Microsoft 2016 books can be delivered in pdf form, but the best way to get them is in OneNote. OneNote is much more organized and you won’t find your students scrolling through their textbook for 20 minutes to “figure out where I was yesterday.”

7. Because the textbooks are OneNote, start with the OneNote tutorial. It is at There are 4 tutorials, they were ok after 2. Then I had them do a couple of practice OneNote notebooks, like the ones in the tutorials. Be sure to delete these before they start, the practice ones tend to come back and cause problems.

8. Now have them download the Microsoft Word OneNote book. We tried downloading it from the Moodle, that took two hours, so we had a shared folder they could get it from or you can pass around a USB with the book on it. Otherwise, it took too long to download. Once they had it, they saved it in their document folder.

9. Have students pull up the Skills Assessment that is at the top of the Moodle. They go into the Word ( Start everyone in Word in 2016) tab and have them go down the list of skills and put M – Mastery – as in they can call from the office and ask where something is and they know. P – for Practice – and N for No Knowledge or No idea. So I tell them if they read the skill and they say “What?????” that’s a no.

Tell them once they have hit 4 or 5 N’s, they should stop and you will come around and you and the student will decide where they should start. You would be surprised how many do not want to start too far along. Then give them their sheet ( I have included all the sheets I have) and if they said they want to start at Lesson 4, I write EX(excused) in all the boxes that they don’t have to do. I also initial each box.

If a student wants to start past the first Circle Back Test, for instance if they have 2013 certification, have them do the test, then move them forward or back depending on the score. Here the Circle Back Test is called a Summative Assessment, 80% of their grade. The regular assignments are Formative Assessment, 20% of their grade. There were no tests in Microsoft 2016, so I copied them from 2013. For some students that is enough review, for others, they need to do all the assignments to get the small differences from 2013 to 2016.

10. Now I put the students in the Moodle in groups, so they don’t have to look at all the assignments at once, if some are in Excel and some in Word, they don’t have that long stream of the Moodle to see.

11.Then have them download the Data files from Microsoft. These are the templates that the MOAC book has them use. Don’t let them put them into Google Docs because that kind of defeats the purpose.

10. Here’s how I tell them to use the book. Start on chapter 1 or whatever chapter they are on, and look for the yellow bar that says “Step-by-Step”. If they look at the yellow bar and say “I can do that” then they should skip to the next section. I tell them we aren’t trying to waste their time learning something they already know. If they don’t know or want to practice what they Step-by-Step is saying, then they follow the steps to get practice. I do not grade these, but they often ask questions about them to clarify.

11. At the end of the chapter, skip the multiple choice test, the true and false, because there are none of those on the test. Then have them do the two assignments at the end of the chapter. Students who really know what they are doing will skip to these, but so far my experience has been that they miss things that they might need if they don’t go through the chapters.

12. The notes/goals were a phase we went through here where students had to pick a goal of where they wanted to be at the end of the week. You can use it for whatever you like or delete it. Now we write “learning targets” on the board each day. They can get done Lesson 1 and 2 in the first week. Then after that they take about 2 days to get through the chapter and 2 to do the assignments. This would be a minimum. After they get in the swing, they can easily do more. But for the average student, once they get started, should take them about 1 week per chapter.

13. I check their assignments on their computers. At first, I printed out the solutions in a notebook that I carried around. If you ask the students what they had to do, that helps clarify and you will slowly get used to the assignments and do not have to have the notebook. When I am not there, they just wait until I get back, then I grade them.

14. I do not have them put the formative assessments in the Moodle. I tell them they can put them in there to store, but I will not be grading them from there. Some students like to put them in there. You can hide them if you’d rather they not use them. Sometimes, I get a homebound students that needs to do the work from home. Then they can turn in their work into the Moodle. But most of the time, it will take you forever to grade the assignments from the Moodle, so don’t have them do that.

15. Now the Circle Backs, I do have them turn in to the Moodle. They complete all the assignments, often there are 3 or more, then they turn them into the Moodle. On their sheet, they put an X in the tiny “Check” box under the Circle Back box. If they don’t mark the X, then I am not sure they are done, so I will only check the ones that I know they have done.

16. The Microsoft Imagine Academy can be used as a review, it is a little light. But for the most part, it is not used.

17. Then, when you start getting students done with all the work, you can schedule the MOS test. I have a sign-up sheet and they have to convince me that they are ready. I usually have 5-10 students take the tests at a time. Everyone else in the room has to act like they are taking the test too, so no devices and no back packs for the day.

Here is something to do to "Rah Rah" the students- when they pass a Microsoft test, send an email to their parents telling the parents to congratulate the students. It is nice and the parents get a good message. Also print out the certificates - twice - once to give to the students, once to put on a "Wall of Fame" in the hallway. Then at the end of the year, print them out in color and give them out at those honor ceremonies that you never can figure out what to give out.

In your grade book, it can get crazy. So just put in the total for the formative assessments and the circle back tests, then I only have 6-8 grades per Word, Excel, etc. I tell parents to ignore the dates and I exempt students out of sections they are not working on at the time.

You will be surprised how fast the students decide they like this class. No homework, they can work at their own pace (no slower than minimum, except for Special Ed students), the faster students don’t have to wait for the slower students and slower students don’t have to be in competition with the faster ones. Everyone ends up working at their pace, that they can handle.

18. At the end of the year, save one Microsoft test as a final exam. I have enough to let each student have 2 tests, but if you only have enough for one, then make it be the final exam. Then I curve the grade. If they pass a Microsoft Office Specialist test, they get 100% in the final exam, no matter what their score.