LearnKey Blog

Access 2010 Training Shoot

The week of September 27 – October 1 saw the LearnKey crew shooting the Microsoft Office Access training with Jason Manibog from Boise Idaho. He is currently a training manager for LeapFox Learning, but has been in the training industry for over a decade. He specializes in SharePoint, Access, and Excel training.

It didn’t take him long to adjust from the real-time teaching environment of the classroom to the more disjunct method of recording. He quickly picked up on the process and within the first day was sailing along smoothly. He posted some impressive film time for a newbie!

He also managed to keep his sense of humor in the sometimes stressful environment, making jokes and laughing through the process. His preparation before shoot and his knowledge of the subject matter made the filming a very straightforward effort. He is definitely an author we hope to bring back for future projects.

Distance Education

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One of our Sales Representatives recently returned from the New Mexico Technology in Education (NM TIE) conference and one of the biggest things he noticed was the attendees were predominately from Higher Education, mostly community colleges and they all had one thing on their minds – distance education.

One reason distance education continues to be a growing trend in higher education is because it is convenient and you can fit it into your schedule. This has become increasingly important as costs of higher education continue to rise in a down economy, most students are working and going to school. Distance education allows students the opportunity to do both.

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Doing More With Less

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Computerworld’s 2011 Forecast survey of IT executives found that most viewed spending restraints as the biggest challenge for the upcoming year and few expect to reverse the cuts made over the last two years.

So what does that mean for the future of today’s businesses? This kind of situation can be handled many ways. Companies can start charging more for their products and services, they can cut the more costly products and services they have to offer – but in the end all that does is hurt the end user. The way to produce quality results is to do more with less – re-evaluate the way you do business instead of just looking at the cost of the end result. Are there ways to implement technology you are currently using to automate processes and cut down on your workload? Are there new technologies that are more efficient at doing what you need to do?

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LearnKey Takes Home Two EDDIE Awards!

2010 Eddie Award Winner

We are very excited to announce that LearnKey was the winner of not one, but two EDDIE Awards!

Both awards were in the Post-Secondary category, one for our Excel 2010 training for the Online Spreadsheet Course category. The other award was for our Photoshop CS4 training for the Online Integrated Design Course category.

The 15th Annual Education Software Review (EDDIE) awards are for programs and websites that supplement the classroom curriculum and increase teacher productivity with inventive ideas. They pick the winners using criteria like, content, potential use, and technical merit. Publishers from around the world submitted titles for consideration.

For more information about LearnKey’s award winning products visit our website at www.learnkey.com.

LearnKey: A TCPN Vendor

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For people who work for school districts or government-run departments, the process of purchasing items and services you need can sometimes be a bit of a hassle. There are all kinds of requirements and policies put in place, not to mention you now have to try and place your trust into a single company out of the many that are bidding for your attention. To those unskilled in Governmentese, this could all be very overwhelming, often complicating things way beyond the normal amount of complication. You may not have known this, but LearnKey is now a TCPN (The Cooperative Purchasing Network) vendor, making the purchasing process that much simpler!

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Flash CS5 for Mac Released

Today we released our Flash CS5 for Mac training course. Chad Troftgruben guides you through the latest features and tools to prepare you for the ACA certification exam and gets you on your way to becoming a Flash expert. The topics covered can be broken down into three major subject areas; design, animation, and action script.

This course is geared toward anyone who wants to pursue certification from beginners to CS4 users looking to learn about the latest features. For more information check out the promo video with Chad or check out the product page.

Internet Explorer 9: A Step Forward

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If you keep up with tech blogs at all, you probably have heard about Microsoft’s release of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Chances are you probably heard about it through some kind of article talking about its support for modern web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. The day of the Beta release, our Twitter feed was filled with posts about how awesome HTML5 is, and how IE9 supports it. I think this article on Slate put it best:

“Wednesday’s demo was so heavy on the new browser’s graphical capabilities that you’d think Microsoft invented HTML5, instead of just now getting around to making a browser that supports it.”

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New Release: Dreamweaver CS5

LearnKey released our Dreamweaver Cs5 for Mac Course this week (I think I just heard a collective cheer from website designers and wannabe designers all over the world) and in celebration we have a promo for you to checkout.

Debbie Berg is back to teach us all the tips and tricks on how to become masters of Dreamweaver CS5. Debbie even shares some of the tips in the promo!  Debbie says this course is perfect for anyone who wants to design a website because you will learn how to layout and design webpages, learn how to use CSS, and learn how to upload and publish websites. For more information, visit our Dreamweaver CS5 product page

Social Networking in Schools

This morning I read an article titled New research just released on “School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies, and Realities in 2010”. The article is about research results regarding what principals thought about social networking in their school communities. To gather information researchers used a survey of school principals and an online discussion group of principals who were already using social networking. The results were surprising to me, most principals found value in using social networking in education listing the following as specific examples of benefits.

What is the value of social networking in education?

  • Improve school wide communications
  • A channel to communicate to an extended network of educators
  • Students view learning as more collaborative
  • Students see it as a connection to real-life learning
  • Improves students motivation, engagement, and /or active involvement

With all of these benefits, what’s the hold up?

Schools are noted as some of the last hold outs to implement the use of social networking. Among the discussion group none of the principals had school or district policies in place for social networking that were sufficient. There are also concerns about safety, privacy, confidentiality, and a lack of information about how to make sure these sites are used appropriately at school.

I know this topic is controversial and people have their opinions on this subject, so let’s hear them. Let us know what you think about social networing in schools!

STEM Projects Factor Into Race to the Top Winners

I read an article today by Erick W. Robelen called “Race to Top Winners Embed STEM Projects in Plans” in Education Week and also looked up some information about this program on the U.S. Department of Education website ed.gov, here are some of the things I found very interesting.

Many educators are waiting to hear wether  a third phase in the federal Race to the Top competition will be approved for an additional $1.35 billion, over $4 billion in federal funding has already been awarded to 11 states and the District of Columbia. 

Phase 2 winners were announced recently and this phase of the competition was pretty tough with many states scoring within a few points of each other. One of the distinguishing factors was the presence of STEM Projects embedded throughout states plans for reform. STEM- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – education was a priority factor  when making the decisions of which states would be awarded the funds. There was a total of 500 points possible for applications and STEM plans could earn states 15 points if they addressed all three of the following areas throughout their applications;

  • Offer a rigorous course of study in the STEM fields;
  • Cooperate with industry experts, research centers, community partners, and others to “prepare and assist teachers in integrating STEM content across grades and disciplines, in promoting effective and relevant instruction, and in offering applied learning opportunities for students”; and
  • Prepare more students for advanced study and careers in STEM, including by addressing the needs of traditionally underrepresented groups in those fields.

The states all came up with different ideas on how to incorporate STEM education into their schools and according to the U.S. Department of Education website ed.gov they plan on bringing all of the states together to implement reforms. To read all of the states applications, Peer Reviewers Comments, and scores visit the U.S. Department of Education website.

To read Erik W. Robelen’s full article in Education Week click here.