Generation YES Announces New Certification Program

OLYMPIA, Washington, June 9, 2016.

The nonprofit Generation YES organization has developed a new technology certification program based on its 20 years of research. When students support technology integration and infrastructure in their schools, they learn technology skills, people, problem solving, leadership, and planning skills. These skills address what employers and colleges often cite as lacking in today’s high school graduates. The rigorous GenYES Certification model is comprehensive because it verifies that students not only possess these skills but have extensive, real-word experience using these skills to significantly transform their schools. Most other technology certifications only address whether certain technologies have been mastered.

GenYES Certification requires a student to complete at least 100 technology assistance projects showing at least 25 hours of support for their school’s teachers and IT staff. Students must also show they worked with ten teachers while ensuring that 15 projects involved collaborating with peers. Once students have met all these prerequisites, they defend their work to a team of Generation YES staff, educators, and existing GenYES certified students. This culminating interview gives the student a chance to describe and defend the specific kinds of support they gave, how they collaborated with peers and experts outside their schools, and how they overcame both technical and organizational challenges. The students interviewed are assessed using a rubric which can be shown to employers and colleges as evidence of their abilities.

Students working toward GenYES certification also provide many valuable hours of technical support to their overworked teachers and IT staff. This student tech support provides cash-strapped K-12 school districts with a substantial return on their technology investment. Each GenYES Certified student provides at least $589 of tech support. Another unique feature of this certification is that students can meet the requirements over time starting as early as the third grade. This provides and ROI throughout K-12.

GenYES certification also helps narrow the digital use divide. Generation YES has created its certification program by focusing on schools with large numbers of underserved students. GenYES certified students have the skills necessary to succeed in university STEM majors as well as for high-tech living wage careers.

About Generation YES

Empowering underserved students and teachers to use technology to improve education in their own school is the mission of Generation YES. With its school-friendly online tools and innovative project-based curriculum, Generation YES builds a collaborative learning community that enables student leaders in grades 4-12 to work alongside their teachers as technology integration collaborators. Generation YES (www.genyes.org) is a nonprofit organization with 20 years of research experience and proven scientific results. We believe that when schools trust and collaborate with their students to integrate technology, academic success follows.

Generation YES and GenYES are trademarks or registered trademarks of Generation YES. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

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For more information:
Dennis Harper, Generation YES
(360) 528-2345
[email protected]

Generation YES site: https://genyes.org
Generation YES program information site: https://www.genyes.org/programs