Be Bona Fide: Get Certified
Contents
1. How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACEs Say Having used FrameMaker for many years assumed that the test would be a cakewalk Wrong First time through failed it After that dived into the user s manual and brushed up on all of the things that hadn t used in a production environment assumed that the test would be the same and could just focus on the areas of weakness Well the test was similar but not the same questions still did well but it was far more challenging than expected I d have to say that anyone who passes the test knows the product Comment from the ACE survey ACEs Say The exam took for InDesign 1 5 failed twice before passing was shocked since considered myself quite knowledgeable The 2 0 exam was a bit easier although expected it to be harder Don t know about the other Adobe exams but InDesign was pretty tough with many tricky questions Comment from the ACE survey Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACEs Say found the test for Photoshop 7 to be MUCH more difficult than the exam for version 6 Some of the questions were not clear or could have had several correct answers found one question on web graphics resolution where none of the answers were correct Comment from the ACE survey How you can become2. an ACE 1 Check the ACE information on Adobe s Web site including ACE program http partners adobe com asn training aceprogram html ACE steps http partners adobe com asn training acehowto html Exam bulletins http partners adobe com asn training acebulletins html List of ACE exams and their languages http partners adobe com asn training aceexamlist html Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 19 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How you can become an ACE continued Gather your study materials List the topics from the Product Proficiency Exam Bulletin you need to study Study for the exam Register for the Adobe Product Proficiency Exam at the Prometric website or by calling Prometric at 800 356 EXAM How you can become an ACE continued 6 Mary Ann Howell Pay a fee to Prometric US 150 Euros 138 00 AU 205 00 Adobe receives a portion of the fees which are put the budget to create the exams Carrie Cooper Sign the ACE program agreement Take and pass the exam Your score is electronically reported to Adobe Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 20 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Signing up for the exam Locate a Prometric test site at www 2test com or in North America call 800 356 3926 There are more than 1000 authorized testing centers worldw
3. and mark them for return Answering the questions 1 Read the directions carefully for each question How many answers should you select 2 Read the question carefully Use the scratch pad to write key words Rephrase it in your own words Compare your version with the original question Do they mean the same thing If they don t you ve misread the question Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 38 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Answering the questions continued 3 Once you understand the question answer it yourself before reading the choices 4 Look at each choice as a True False question Read all the choices Cross off mentally the obviously false choices As you read the choices mentally note the choices that seem the best Answering the questions continued Answer the questions from the user guide point of view If two or more choices seem correct choose the most specific one For example You can use up to 52 different series of autonumbers is better than You can use more than one series of autonumbers Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 39 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Answering the questions continued 7 If you have no idea of the answer check for look alike options and check for the one that contains the most information Don t
4. of information www hikaripub com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 42
5. or Trainer Who writes the questions A variety of subject matter experts provide the questions Some are internal Adobe employees from several organizations within the company tech support product program marketing developers etc Additionally we rely on many of our training partners to provide their input and test questions to the exams Must be ACEs on that particular product Carrie Cooper Adobe Comment from the ACE survey As a contributor to many of the Adobe exams can tell you how difficult it is to come up with a small number of objectives to meet the number of questions allowed on the exam then split those into smaller groups and try to write questions that match those objectives without being too vague or conversely asking questions that really don t test the knowledge of those taking the exam Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer The exam life cycle Technical review Edit Exam beta Forms build Item selection Cut score meeting Where the pass fail rate is determined Final exam build QA Exam publish Localization Ongoing maintenance Carrie Cooper Adobe How the exams are tested The exams go through multiple edits and reviews for language and technical accuracy Then the exams go through a beta where Entire item pool is delivered to a limited numbe
6. pay attention to how many A s B s C s or D s you have marked Checking your answers Mary Ann Howell Work on the hard questions you didn t answer Rework the questions you answered but were not sure of Since your first choice is usually correct don t change your answer unless your sure of the correction Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 40 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Checking your answers continued 3 Review all the rest of the questions if you have time 4 Use all the time you have This test advice is from Harvard Westlake School website http www harvardwestlake com students studyskills chapter6 htm College of Saint Benedict Saint J ohn s University website http www csbsju edu academicadvising help teststrt html ACES Say It s not just a test of your ability to out guess the test writers it s a test of how well you can use your product knowledge and skills to figure out the exact as they think of it right answer from nearly right answers would not call it a breeze Peter Gold on the framers mail list frameusers com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer What you need to remember Go to the Adobe website for ACE information User the exam bulletin as a study guide Hikari Publishing Fine distillation
7. Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer STC 50 May 20 2003 Mary Ann Howell maryann hikaripub com Copyright 2003 What I m not going to do Give away exam answers or Adobe won t let me play anymore Give you secrets that will guarantee your passing Besides the cramming you need hands on experience Subject you to an hour of my opinion everything here is someone else s work Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer What am going to do Define the Adobe ACE and ACTP programs Talk about how certification can help you Go over the certification steps Describe the Adobe exam format Give you study suggestions Run through some example questions What I hope you ll do Give me your opinions Share your experiences Recommend information sources tools Make jokes Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Information sources Carrie Cooper Training Partner Relations Manager Adobe Solutions Network John Skelton FM ACE and question provider ACTP in Adobe Acrobat FrameMaker FrameMaker SGML InDesign and Go Live Website http www FAQmasters com Information sources continued 30 survey respo
8. estions reflect their real life use of the tool 1 said it reflected use very well 8 said it reflected use quite well 14 said it reflected use fairly well 6 said it did not reflect use very well Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 15 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACEs Say expected the FrameMaker ACE exam to be task based For example expected that create a template actually be tested on applying master pages etc was surprised when it turned out to be a multiple choice test Comment from the ACE survey How hard are the exams Survey question Was the exam easy or hard for you 5 said it was way easy 7 said it was easy 13 said it was somewhat challenging 4 said it was very challenging Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 16 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACEs Say The exams can be easy or hard Last time the InDesign exam version 1 5 was tough This time easy Same with Photoshop sometimes hard sometimes easy Comment from the ACE survey How well did they do Survey question Did you pass the exam 13 said they did great 5 said they did pretty well 7 said they did average 4 just made it 1 didn t pass Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 17 Be Bona Fide Get Certified
9. ide Be choosey if you can If you have a choice visit the test sites and pick one with comfortable chairs and up to date computers ACES Say The computer equipment room lighting and ergonomics were horrible couldn t wait to get the heck out of there The aged and fuzzy display gave me a headache the chair and desk made my back sore and the florescent lighting made me nauseous Comment from the ACE survey Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 21 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Signing up for the exam continued You can schedule your exam up to six weeks in advance Exams are conducted Monday through Saturday during normal business hours How the ACEs study Ranking 1 User guide 2 Third party books 3 Classroom in a book Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 22 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How the ACEs study continued 4 Other Years of hands on experience Real world experience Basically plenty experience using the product in a variety of situations User to User forums Online training A trainer in a live class Practice test There is no longer a practice test on line At one point in time we did have a practice exam for Photoshop 5 This was very out of date so we needed to remove it from our web site Unfor
10. ing credentials one time verification Accepted credentials Certified Technical Trainer Certificate of Mastery CTT Certification Valid teaching credential government issued credential Valid Microsoft Certified Trainer MCT Certified Lotus Instructor CLI Certified Novell Instructor CNI credential Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Accepted credentials According to Carrie Cooper the most common credential used is the Certified Technical Trainer CTT certification followed by a government issued credential CTT credentials CTT Certification is provided by CompTIA Computer Technology Industry Association CTT certification is the cross industry credential recognizing that a technical instructor has attained a standard of excellence in his or her profession Those holding the CTT certification demonstrate core competencies which include instructor knowledge and credibility classroom performance and effective communication and presentation skills Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer CTT credentials CTT is a two part certification The first exam is made up of 95 multiple choice questions Exam cost 207 US 146 229 Euro as of the CompTIA website May 2003 The second exam is an eva
11. karipub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Exam format Four basic question formats 1 Multiple choice with four choices 1 right and three distractors that may be almost right 2 Multiple choice with more than one right X amount right and 3 distractors so you have X plus three answers Exam format continued 3 Exhibit questions Click a button to see an example or a graphic Answer the related question 4 Point and click questions Click the task button a graphic appears Click where you should on the graphic to answer the question correctly Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 28 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACE s advice Read the FULL question and try to answer it before reading the answers Read ALL the answers even if think you know it is the first one Make the selection ACE s advice continued 4 When you are finished review them and only change an answer if you are absolutely sure of the new answer The test has a feature that allows you to mark questions either not answered ones or ones with which you have a question In my experience some questions are answered by another question so review all your answers Frank Harper HIDS Incorporated on the framers mail list frameusers com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bo
12. luation of a twenty minute video you teaching a class Video exam cost 225 You can take the written exam at both Pearson VUE and Prometric testing centers Multiple choice test tips The FM6 test has 100 questions all multiple choice The questions are selected from a large bank of questions so you could take it twice and not get the same questions It is scored immediately Frank Harper HIDS Incorporated on the framers mail list frameusers com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 36 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACE test strategy There is no penalty for guessing so answer all the questions The questions are weighted equally Test strategy continued 1 Look over the test Check out how long it is On scratch paper write the halfway time and the halfway question number 2 Answer easy questions first You won t miss any easy questions by running out of time It builds confidence Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 37 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Test strategy continued 3 Mark hard questions for return and skip them Later questions sometimes help answer earlier questions Your subconscious may work away at a hard question while you re working on easy ones 4 Answer questions that you re sort of sure of but not completely sure
13. m logo You get heads up on information about promotions and Adobe events If you want to be an ACTP certification is an important first step Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How many ACEs are there There are over 7000 ACEs worldwide Photoshop Acrobat and InDesign are the most common product certifications Carrie Cooper of Adobe ACE history The first ACE exam was giving in 1995 for Photoshop 3 0 followed closely by Acrobat 3 After Effects 3 FrameMaker 5 and PageMaker 6 5 Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Exams you can take Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat eForms Adobe After Effects Adobe FrameMaker Adobe GoLive Adobe Illustrator Adobe InDesign Adobe LiveMotion Adobe PageMaker Adobe Photoshop Adobe Premiere How the exams are delivered Administered by Prometric an independent third party testing company Taken on a Windows computer Closed book tests Made up of 60 to 90 multiple choice questions chosen from a larger pool of questions One to two hours long The results are given to you at the testing center immediately after you complete the exam Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert
14. na Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer After the exam You immediately get your test results showing how well you scored in different areas As soon as you pass the exam your name and exam results are sent to Adobe by Prometric Your exam data is then entered into an Adobe database After the exam continued You will be sent an ACE Welcome Kit and access to the ACE logo You are placed on the Adobe certification mailing list to receive information about promotions and events There is a 25 discount for those who need to retake the exam Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACE Welcome Kit You ll get an ACE Welcome Kit in 4 6 weeks after your exam The kit includes A welcome letter A password and a link to the ACE logo and guidelines for its use An ACE certificate How to stay current as an ACE After a new product version is released ACEs have 90 days to get recertified Contact Prometric to register for the new Product Proficiency Exam Your current certification on that product is verified Give the promotional code RETEST to the CSR and you get a 25 discount Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Adobe Certified Training Providers ACTP The ACTP p
15. ndents 15 took the FrameMaker exam 5 took the Photoshop exam 3 took the PageMaker exam 2 took the Acrobat 1 took the Illustrator exam 3 took the InDesign exam Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Information sources continued Experience of survey respondents e 16 had taken ACE exams before e 14 took the exam for the first time 5 people had 10 years 2 people had 8 10 years 10 people had 5 7 years 6 people had 3 4 years 7 people had 0 2 years Information sources continued Framers from the framers email list www frameusers com Adobe website http partners adobe com asn training aceprogram html Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Purpose of the ACE certification An Adobe Certified Expert has passed an Adobe Product Proficiency Exam for an Adobe software product Adobe Certified Experts are eligible to promote themselves to clients or employers as highly skilled expert level users of Adobe software ACE certification is a recognized worldwide standard for excellence in Adobe software knowledge From the Adobe website Why be certified According to Carrie Cooper Training Partner Relations Manager Adobe Solutions Network The ACE does hold a lot of distinction in the design area It helps numerou
16. r of individuals in the target audience Exam data is analyzed to determine which items have good performance based on item statistics Carrie Cooper Adobe Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 11 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Localization ACE exams are offered in various languages As a rule of thumb all exams are localized into French German Japanese There are currently a few exams in Spanish and Italian Carrie Cooper Adobe List of exams and languages http partners adobe com asn training aceexamlist html One FrameMaker test There is now only one exam for FM There used to be three One for structured One for non structured One for FrameMaker SGML developers Acrobat has 2 Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 12 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer One FrameMaker test There is only one FrameMaker product now FrameMaker 7 0 ships as one product combining standard FrameMaker and FrameMaker SGML There is a separate exam for Acrobat Forms which is really a Forms exam which will not be specific to a version of Acrobat There was a high demand for this internally and externally so we created it Carrie Cooper Adobe ACEs Say FrameMaker is a very complex product and is used in a variety of ways Previously there were 3
17. rogram is for individual instructors training businesses and academic institutions that teach Adobe products ACTPs have proven training ability and expert product knowledge and have met the ACTP program requirements They are eligible to promote themselves to prospective clients and students as highly skilled expert instructors of Adobe software Adobe website How many ACEs are ACTPs also About 80 of our ACEs are ACTPs Carrie Cooper of Adobe Survey says 9 survey respondents were ACTPs 20 were not Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 32 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACTP benefits Access to some Adobe products Classroom in a Book PDF file downloads Discounts on Adobe Press book titles Discounts on Adobe software Monthly ASN newsletter ACTP benefits Marketing help Company listing in the Adobe Partner Finder on Adobe com Eligible to exhibit in the ASN Pavilion at major industry trade shows Qualify to rent Adobe s mailing list of registered users Access to a set of Adobe s Merchandising Tools Eligible to submit a Success Story on Adobe com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 33 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How to become an ACTP Fill out an on line application Sign an agreement and mail it in Have an ACE credential Provide train
18. s candidates with their job searches The education market is a growing area of our ACEs Many schools are using ACE to test their students on their skills on these products Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Why be certified Survey says Do you think having ACE credentials has helped you with your career 9 people said it was very useful 3 people said it was quite useful 8 people said it was fairly useful 9 people said it has had little effect Why be certified ACES say One of the most useful qualifications have passed In fact am an ACE 3 times over with Acrobat 4 and 5 and Adobe InDesign Comment from the ACE survey Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Why be certified ACEs Say Of course my own professional development is important to me and FrameMaker certification is a tangible milestone that can wear proudly on my cube wall even if nobody else really knows or cares what FrameMaker is Sean Brierley on the framers mail list frameusers com Benefits of your certificate You can promote yourself to clients or employers as a highly skilled user of Adobe software You get an ACE certificate to put in your portfolio You have permission to use the progra
19. separate ACE tests cramming it all into one means superficial coverage of many areas Comment from the ACE survey Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 13 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer ACEs Say believe the FrameMaker exam should be broken into three parts for those who use FM in the standard mode for those who use the structured mode and persons who use it in both modes scored poorly on the structured mode because have not used it in that mode Comment from the ACE survey ACEs Say FrameMaker 7 is now one product so if a user is labeled an expert he or she should be able to apply FrameMaker expertly in all the ways users will apply it as it comes out of the box anyway had never used structured FM before but after ran the the Cookbook a couple times and worked on a structured template of my own passed the FM 7 exam with no problem Comment from the ACE survey Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer What test takers think of the exams Survey question Did the exam covered the software tool thoroughly 7 said it was very thorough 10 said it was quite thorough 12 said it was fairly thorough 1 said it wasn t thorough What test takers think of the exams Survey question Did the qu
20. the other stuff we knew about vanilla FM and SGML Structured FM too Comment from the ACE survey Exam day Be in good shape for the exam Sleep Eat Breath deeply Know where the test center is Leave early Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Get to the exam center Show up a few minutes early Bring two IDs You ll sign an agreement Exam room The test room is a computer lab There will be people taking other certification tests Scratch paper and a pencil is provided but after the test you leave them behind Your computer will be set up with your test You can take an untimed practice test to see how it works Don t rush you will probably have plenty of time Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 26 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer Exam time Survey question Did you have enough time to finish 9 people said Lots and lots of time 17 people said Plenty of time 3 people said J ust enough time 1 person said Not enough time Exam The exam is entirely on computer with 90 100 multiple choice questions You have one to two hours depending on the test You will not be using the Adobe software program A timer at the top of your screen shows you how much time you have left Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hi
21. tunately we do not have the budget to create practice exams at this time Carrie Cooper of Adobe Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com 23 Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How the ACEs study Use the bulletin dt lists precisely what is covered on the exam it pays to study this bulletin and then go to the reference material and study up on it The list is actually not that long Not for someone who is going to call themselves an expert Steve Murphy on the framers mail list frameusers com How the ACEs study continued read the entire user guide Then went down the proficiency bulletin item by item and went back and re read the portions of the guide that dealt with each item Of course it helps to be using FM extensively and have a lot of experience That just takes time Steve Murphy on the framers mail list www frameusers com Mary Ann Howell Hikari Publishing www hikaripub com Be Bona Fide Get Certified How to become an Adobe Certified Expert or Trainer How the ACEs study continued To prepare went through each example in CIB and also read through each chapter in the user guide Sean Brierley on the framers mail list frameusers com prepared for my FM 7 ACE with a friend we quizzed the dickens out of each other on all the things in the ACE Bulletin and all
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