 Today we start with a series of webinars called Reflections on MEC. We are going to describe what MEC is. It's the Moodle Educator Certificate. But most importantly, we are inviting people who went through this certification process. And we are wondering, can a certificate change someone's life? We have Tis with us. Tis Kikladi is a learning consultant from Catalyst, and she's going to share her experience with MEC. And I am Anna Krasay, Educator, Advisor and MEC Coordinator here at Moodle HQ. So before letting Tis speak about her experience, let me give you a quick introduction about what is the Moodle Educator Certificate. The MEC is an international certificate for teaching with Moodle. And it is exclusively offered by Moodle certified service providers. Be careful. The MEC is not a basic Moodle training. No. It's not even an advanced Moodle training. The point is that MEC is not a training at all. It is a certification process focused on meeting learners' needs with Moodle. And it requires that candidates have a real-life experience in teaching with Moodle for at least a year. So the MEC Educator Certification consists of six courses, not training courses, certification courses, that lead to six badges. And once someone has all these six badges, gets the MEC, this one certificate. Now, we have six courses and six badges because the MEC is based on the European framework for the digital competence of educators. Perhaps you know it as Digi-combe-du. And this framework has organized educators' professional competencies and pedagogy competencies as well as learning competencies in six areas. The professional engagement, teaching and learning, digital resources, the assessment, the empowering learners, and the facilitating learners' digital competence. And overall, this framework just contains 22 competencies organized in these six areas. And if we take a closer look, we can see, for example, that in the teaching and learning area, we talk about teaching and guidance and self-regulated learning and collaborative learning, all this stuff. So the question is, how can we do all this inside Moodle? When you will join or if you think to join a partner and take the MEC, you're going to see a page like this one with the MEC program and all the courses listed here. You can see we have the courses and we are going to see one of the courses, the teaching and learning course, specifically inside to see how it looks. All the MEC courses have the same structure. So we begin with a welcome section where we have the announcements form and a book, how this course works with details about how the course is organized, the time needed and stuff like that. The second section contains, what do you already know? It contains a self-assessment check-in quiz. This is a test based on the Selfie for Teachers, a very well-known tool, especially in the European area. It's a self-assessment quiz where everybody can evaluate where he stands on specific competencies. And the third section is the teaching and learning overview. Actually, it's the overview section. Here we have mainly books and quizzes. The books basically explain the competence and contextualize the competence within Moodle. It's not about how Moodle works and how to set up Moodle activities or resources. It's just explaining which tools can be used to achieve and demonstrate this competence. And there is always a self-evaluated quiz, accompanying the book so people can take it and confirm their understanding. The number of books and the relevant quizzes depends on the number of the competencies existing in its area. So in some courses we have three, in some courses we have four, like here, and in some courses, in one course actually we have five. The next section is called Your Assessed Task and is the place where the actual assessment is happening. Here we have two assignments and the candidates need to write these two assignments. It's 500 to 800 words for each assignment. They need to answer specific questions, real life problems, including their own experiences. Candidates can include screenshots of a course they have created or a demo course, but most usually from a real course that they have offered. And they can include a link to a course as well, giving the facilitators permissions so they can actually view the course. They have the right to resubmit twice after the first grading and they require a minimum B2 as a pass score. Now, what is a B2? You can see here we have candidates rubric. It's the rubric that we use to assess those two assignments. Well, we have vertically listed the four competencies and horizontally you can see the levels that vary from A to B1, B2, C1, C2. Now, if you are familiar with the Common European Framework of Reference for Language, you will recognize this scale of A, B, C levels. These are the levels that are used and are suggested from the Digital Competence Framework of Educators from the Digital Medu. And we have adopted and used it here in the MEC. So if you're standing at A1, then it's too soon for you to think about the MEC. You still need some experience. You may need training. And again, if you are at level A2, again, you need more experience and more training. If you are at level B1, then perhaps you are a good candidate to start MEC. And at B2, we have the pass score for the MEC. It is for independent users, for experts, model experts, teacher experts. And if you are at level C, then you are already a leader or a top trainer. MEC is already offered in seven different languages. It is fully translated in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. And there are more languages, more translations to come eventually. But at the moment, you can take them in these languages. And how this works, it's very, very easy. If you just log in into the MEC site, you can simply change the system role, the system language. And that will also change the language, not just of the system, but also the content. So it's super easy. And we are now passing over to Tiz to hear her reflections on MEC and see how MEC helped her change her life. I'm going to mute myself, so I'm leaving the floor to Tiz. Thank you. Thank you all. There are two different languages. My, my, my, you. There is Kaifara-Fara, Te Awa, and Mahia. My, Mahara-Hara. Thank you to the members of Te Whanganui, Tara, and Honeo. Kao Kirkland, Toa Kao Whanao, Kao Tish, Toa Kao Inua. Can you go to the next slide, please? So that's a greeting in the, in Te Reo, which is the Indigenous language of the Maori people of New Zealand. And we commonly or often start a, meeting or a talk with that particular kind of greeting. So I'll translate for you. So I said to greetings and I'm letting you know a little bit about me and who I am and where I stand in the world so that we can make some connections together maybe. So I said to you that the Tararua hills have my heart. Those are the hills that are close to where I grew up. The Kaifara-Fara stream eases my worries. So that's a stream, a river, a piece of water that I feel close to. And then I said that I recognize the ancestral and spiritual landmarks of where I live which is Te Whanganui or Wellington in New Zealand. Then I told you my surname Kirkland, my first name Tish, and then I want to say Noreira, Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou Katoa which is greetings and blessings to you all. So my name is Tish Kirkland. I'm located in New Zealand. I work, I'm an e-learning consultant at the Moodle Partner Catalyst IT and I've been working here since 2019. If you go to the next slide you can see where New Zealand is located on this map if you haven't worked that out already. So I'm proud to work for Catalyst IT, a premium certified Moodle provider and the largest New Zealand owned company specializing in free and open source technologies and services. As of 2016 Catalyst is the fourth biggest contributor to the Moodle project and the largest in Australasia behind Moodle HQ. In 2019 we were globally recognized for our major contributions to Moodle and in 2021, 2021 we were awarded the Moodle Global Certified Service Provider of the Year. So I'm very proud to be working for Catalyst IT. Next slide please. So I know this webinar is called Reflections on MEC but for me MEC is more than that. It's a part of a wider reflection and consolidation and a lot of Moodle experience and other prior learning. So I'm going to tell you a story today about how I arrived at the MEC and where it has taken me since. I graduated from Victoria University in with and Wellington College of Education with a BA in Education and a postgraduate diploma of teaching. And then I went on to work as a training manager for the BodyShop New Zealand where I experienced what it was like to work for an organization that had values, put principles on a par with profit, using their position to facilitate change to have a wider impact. And through my work and connections at the BodyShop I had the opportunity to volunteer in developing countries and help people in need have a better living situation. And these included Samoa and Timor-Leste. These experiences for me reinforced my passion for supporting human rights in particular the rights of the child. And especially when one is in a position of privilege, something that I later clicked with when I heard about the Moodle philosophy and practice of open source. The concept of helping others led me to a 17 year career English language teaching where my objective was to teach others a skill that I had been born into so that they could achieve their own personal and professional goals to live in an English speaking country or to do business with English speaking clients. I had the opportunity to live and work in several countries and visit many more which was an amazing experience. Over this whole time I had been interested in computers, technology and learning and some of this was before the internet was widely available. And this was something I utilized later when I realized I could use a Moodle site to curate and create content for my students. So I first heard about Moodle from a friend in 2008, not long after we'd moved to Australia and decided to have a go with it. It was hard. Initially I used a site hosted by my friend who had introduced me to Moodle to curate online content and later to host my own courses in content. And this became my newly developed small business which was to teach and facilitate courses for the writing component of a particular English language test. And I hope none of you have PTSD from looking at the name of that test. I read documentation, asked questions and sometimes I found though it was so developer focused that as a front end person, a site administrator, a teacher and content creator, I really felt out of my depth. Plus it was like a new language to me. So many words I hadn't used before and certainly not necessarily in that context. However I persevered and it led me to meeting others who employed me to do Moodle things, mainly along the lines of instructional design and course creation. In 2012 I attended my first Moodle moot which in retrospect had a huge impact on me. I learned how people were using Moodle to give back to the wider community and I learned what open source was. I was hooked. I did everything I could get my hands on. Moodle courses and certifications, a MOOC, I set myself up a Moodle cloud site and I joined the Moodle users association. I loved the interaction and collaboration that the community brought and as a sole trader working from home I really thrived on this. I attended Moots when I could, presented at Moots and met many inspiring people, some of whom have become mentors and lifelong friends. As a result of all this I got my online business up and running properly and in addition to online tuition it was used at a local English language school in Brisbane as part of their language program. So with all this in mind I had been looking for something to formalize my experience with Moodle, something industry recognized and something that could open doors. While all this Moodling had been going on I still had my day job as an English language teacher and tried to use Moodle as much as possible both in the classroom and out of the classroom. However I knew I wanted more Moodle in my life. When I heard about the MEC at a Moodle Moot I was very excited. This certification seemed to fit exactly into my experience of Moodle and my love of education. I wanted to do more Moodle things and this seemed like the perfect opportunity which it was and it led me to great things. I undertook this certification as soon as I could and I found it to be very enjoyable and rewarding experience and it consolidated a lot of what I had already done. On that note I highly recommend getting as much possible as much experience as possible with Moodle before undertaking the certification. There were aspects I struggled with. I had to resubmit assignments. I found that my lack of experience with a range of Moodle sites and different clients and their needs having only administered my own site and own clients was something that I struggled with. But I enjoyed the scenarios and imagining the solutions to complete the assessments and although it's not essential I found that using my Moodle Cloud site to help test ideas and to showcase them was really helpful. For me my favorite aspects of the course were receiving constructive feedback, sharing ideas and getting creative. I liked having the descriptive rubric with criteria to aim for and having been an examiner in the past I was familiar with the rubrics and the CFR levels but A1 to C2 levels. During the MEC had real life applications for me and I was able to later repurpose some of my assessments in what happened next. So it turns out that for me the MEC was what I had been providing to my students in terms of English language teaching and IELTS preparation. MEC was for me what I had been providing to them. So while I was in Australia I saw a job advertised with Catalyst IT, a Moodle partner in Aotearoa New Zealand, my home country and having the MEC gave me the confidence to apply and I used some of my MEC assignments as part of a portfolio that I created for my job application and I used Moodle Cloud to showcase these and I'm happy to report that I was successful in my job application and we moved back to New Zealand after nearly 20 years away and I am so happy to be close to family and be raising at home raising our daughter and in a job that I love. While working at Catalyst I've since used other MEC assignments as a base for speaking at conferences such as the New Zealand Moodle Moot, the Irish and UK Moodle Moot and a national conference for English language teachers here in New Zealand and I've built on some of my assignments to add content to MoodleNet and to contribute to a T-Soul language association newsletter and online e-learning world articles and at Catalyst I've had the opportunity to work with some on some really exciting projects such as working with a developing country who is using Moodle for their national primary and secondary education during the pandemic working with charity organizations in particular those who provide community education about the environment and mental health and working with organizations that promote women's health and health and well-being for Māori and Pacifica communities in New Zealand and because I work for a Moodle partner I was trained to become an MEC facilitator and Catalyst offers the MEC through several of our offices worldwide. So sharing and giving back is important to me and it ties in with the Moodle philosophy of open-source collaboration and learning together and if it weren't for open-source free courses collaboration and the friendliness and encouragement of the Moodle community and just plain having a go I would not be where I am today. My involvement in and with the Moodle community now how no matter how small it may seem gave me the skills and ability to work and therefore save money to pay for the MEC and in my opinion and my experience the investment was well worth it. Your journey can take any form and there are many varied paths Moodle and the MEC opened doors for me and I believe it can open doors for you too. Before you take the MEC I would say get involved read the documentation about Moodle get a Moodle cloud site attend moots get badges get as much experience beforehand as possible take as many courses as you can through the Moodle Academy and through certified partners and I would say go for it. Kia ora. Thank you thank you so much Thies what a journey I would say you're a real proof that a certification can actually change someone's life if you want to if you are interested in Moodle yep I would say go for it let me check the chat if we have any comments any questions if anyone wants to jump in Kelly was impressed with the greeting yeah nobody had idea about it Roxana says thank you for showing such a rich experience Alex thanks also very inspiring Lauren says and yeah well my question to to all of you what do you think are you ready for the MEC if you want to know the answer it's very very very easy to take a little test the selfie for for educators you can find it in the same course where you found the link where we are now and you can take and you can see if you are ready to take the MEC right now or if you need to come back at the later stage where you have gained more experience or get some training from the academy or from certified service providers so before we close this session I would like to let you know a little bit about how you can get involved here in the Moodle academy and help us grow and by contributing to its development being in the academy you can be an active member you can suggest topic ideas what would you like to to see us covering in the future you can join the get involved course and make your own suggestions ask the subject if you are interested in vote for subjects that have been already suggested tell us what do you want to hear from us you can also contribute the webinars if you have a particular skill if you are an expert in some area you have something interesting to say yes please let us know presenters webinar presenters will gain a badge present a present this badge from the academy and you can also contribute to courses you can share your expertise you can share we can contribute on the development of courses and gain a course builder badge and of course please help spread the word about emcee tell your friends and go like about Moodle academy and emcee I would say and consider to join the academy the courses of the academy and gain badges tell others about the Moodle academy and yes do take the are you ready for the emcee quiz and if you're ready our partners are ready to welcome you and they will support you through the certification process thank you very much for being here today I'm going to make a last check in the chat we have a couple questions okay wow we have several messages Lauren asked the selfie training is the selfie test you mean it's inside the emcee quiz called the are you ready for emcee quiz Alex says I'm not quite sure if I'm prepared well enough for the emcee so some partners can take can give may offer the one of the six modules but I would say the most safe option is to take the quiz and contact certified service provider take an interview with them talk with them at explain them what are your doubts and where you don't feel very confident that they might offer you a training a dedicated training on the specific area and they can prepare you in order to go through the certification process we have a question from John I noticed that Dana stressed that emcee is not a training can you say some more about the difference between training and certification yes of course well training is meant to to teach you you have unlimited attempts you are there to learn you can repeat things until you get the mastery of a specific skill but here is a certification process so things are strict you cannot have unlimited attempts in the assignments for example you don't have unlimited time to complete emcee whenever you want partners set usually specific time frames for completing the emcee and you can come back if something urgent happens but you cannot take the process for more than longer than two years certification means that things are strict and it's not just the partners who review the assignments partners do the first assessment and then Moodle HQ education team confirms and verifies the assessments and confirms that you are ready for certification she says that yeah she took her it took her about eight weeks to complete the emcee yes and yeah sometimes may take longer indeed thank you Roxana Kelly happy to have you here yes as she says the certification process requires some quality time I would say dedicate a lot of time and a lot of thinking time and writing because you have to actually reflect on your experience on your yeah on your teaching experience with Moodle and suggest ideas suggest the best options to do things in the scenarios we have okay does the emcee could be started at any time or any or in particular addition state well it depends the the part the Moodle partner that you will contact with we usually suggest to search for people for Moodle partners near you so you can have any is in the time zone and this will they will tell you when the next session starts some of them offer them on specific dates some others have it open all year every day so you have to talk to them directly you can contact these for example in catalyst you can contact Kelly at Moodle yes depends where you are if you go to the Moodle.com slash partners we can find the list of the certified service providers and filter the results from based on the emcee in your area I think we haven't left anything open any any questions open in the in the chat and yes emcee has a price but the price of the emcee depends heavily it's defined by the Moodle partners so we cannot tell you the the price of the emcee you have to contact them directly how does the process work after emcee completion is there an interview after the tasks are completed Aurelia asked this and Aurelia no the the interview actually comes before partners walk you through the emcee before they allow you to take the emcee because if if you are new to Moodle or you are a new teacher there's no point to to try to for the emcee it's for experienced users for experienced educators so the interview comes first so they can confirm that you have the necessary level of experience and then you're just then rolling to the courses and you complete the courses and at the end the facilitators alert the education team in Moodle headquarters to review and confirm verify your work candidates work so thank you very much all of you for being here early in morning or late at night it was really nice to have you and it was really nice to start the year with such inspiring presentation story I would say from this thank you so much has been a pleasure