Get Ready for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Junior with Jeff Johnson
Certified: Certiport Educator Podcast
English - March 22, 2023 06:00 - 22 minutes - 20.7 MB - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsEducation Technology business career technology certifications education educationconference educationcourses educators students teacher Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Every day we use and interact with devices that use artificial intelligence (AI). Help your students understand and get excited about the power of AI technology with the Microsoft Imagine Cup Junior competition. The Microsoft Imagine Cup Junior (ICJ) is a global student competition for students ages 13-18. Through ICJ, educators utilize lessons to teach their students about AI technologies, students form teams, and apply these lessons to dream up a concept or idea to make a difference in their local community or world around them.
In this week’s episode, we had the opportunity to chat about ICJ with Microsoft’s Jeff Johnson. Jeff Johnson is Senior Business Manager for the Skills & Employability team in the Worldwide Public Sector Education group at Microsoft. In his role, Jeff leads the company skills strategy with K-12 and higher education institutions, government workforce agencies, educators, and partners around the world surrounding adoption and engagement with technical skills solutions for students including learning pathways and Microsoft’s industry recognized certification portfolio. Jeff is instrumental in helping Microsoft form broad education alliances with schools, higher education institutions, and governments globally to assist learners in gaining future-ready skills and technical credentials for the digital economy.
We talked with Jeff about the importance of AI skills, and how educators can introduce students to the world of AI through the Microsoft Imagine Cup Junior competition. Jeff gave us all the details about ICJ, how students can compete, how educators can support them, and how to keep the AI momentum going after the competition has finished.
Jeff mentioned several resources during this episode. Get everything you need to dive into ICJ here:
Imagine Cup Junior blog post: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Blog/2023/March/What-is-Microsoft-Imagine-Cup-Junior
Imagine Cup Junior website: www.imaginecup.com/junior.
Microsoft’s AI for Good Initiative: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-good
Microsoft Certified Fundamentals certification information: https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Certifications/Microsoft/MCF/Overview.
Free learning materials for Microsoft Certified Fundamentals certification: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/.
For teachers working with students over 18, check out the Imagine Cup: www.imaginecup.com.