Candidates include individuals preparing to become classroom educators, current educators, faculty of educator training colleges, educational administrators and other professionals looking to demonstrate that they have the skills needed to effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning.

Educators holding an MCE certification have the competencies needed to apply technology skills to the teaching and learning process, creating a richer learning experience for students, and saving precious time. This program gives teachers the tools to build 21st century skills into their lessons. It aligns to global educator standards which can be a helpful differentiator, whether you are looking for your first teaching position, interested in taking on a leadership role in your school, or discussing your qualifications with parents. In addition, it provides a common language and framework to help teachers build complementary skill development opportunities across the curriculum, and provides a process for on-going teacher collaboration around 21st century instructional design. The key benefits are:

• Third-party skill validation: The MCE is a valid and reliable measurement of foundational educator Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competencies.
• Achieve recognized teaching competencies: Standards are mapped to the UNESCO ICT-CFT, Technology Literacy approach.
• Professional title: After passing the test, you may use the title, “Microsoft Certified Educator” on your IT Academy profile, and other professional correspondence.

• Ensures faculty/staff have basic understanding of Microsoft Education tools
• Ensures faculty/staff can demonstrate how to successfully incorporate 21st century skills into lessons
• Ensures faculty/staff know which Microsoft Education tools can support which specific 21st century skills
• Provides access to effective professional development
• Provides reliable validation of ICT investments
• MCE represents a way to evaluate educator readiness and effectiveness of professional development engagement.

Students around the world need advanced skills to succeed in the globalised, knowledge-based world of today. 21st Century Learning Design helps teachers redesign their existing lessons and learning activities to build students' 21st century skills. 21st Century Skills are a set of complex skills required today for success.

The 21CLD curriculum consists of the following 8 online courses by Microsoft:

• The 21CLD introductory course explains the background to the 21st century skills and provides the research at the foundation of the overall 21CLD curriculum.
• In the next 6 courses, each of the 21st century skills is introduced. The 21CLD rubric is used to analyse learning unit examples.
• The final course brings together all of the 21st century learning design elements and leads educators to reflect on how the 21CLD approach can influence their own classroom practice and their students' learning.

The 21CLD curriculum describes 06 rubrics of 21st century learning, each of which represents an important skill for students to develop. These 06 rubrics are designed as 8 courses of approximately 20 hours of online tutorials, video, readings, educator-discussion and self-assessment.

The six rubrics are:

• Collaboration
• Skilled communication
• Knowledge construction
• Self-regulation
• Real-world problem-solving and innovation
• Use of ICT for learning

The MCE/Technology Literacy for Educators certification test is an intermediate-level examination intended to be a valid and reliable measure of competencies as measured by the 21st Century Learning Design (21CLD) framework.

The MCE exam is all about applying 21st Century learning design rubrics to classroom scenarios using Microsoft tools. The majority of the exam is to demonstrate your understanding of the 6 rubrics that are core to the 21st Century Learning Design (21 CLD).

The types of questions that appear on the exam will vary, but may include one or more of the following:

• Multiple-choice, single answer
• Multiple-choice, multiple answer
• Best answer
• Extended matching
• Hot area
• Drag-and-drop
• Build list and reorder
• Simulations
• Short answer

The following questions are representative of those that you can expect to see associated with each case study. These items are samples only and will not appear on an actual exam.