LearnKey Blog

Dreamweaver CC 2015 Test Prep Released

LearnKey’s Dreamweaver CC 2015 Test Prep course is a complementary resource to go along with the Dreamweaver CC course, authored by Expert Chad Chelius. Although the Dreamweaver CC course readies you for the Dreamweaver CC exam, there are new objectives and types of test questions which are covered in the Dreamweaver CC 2015 Test Prep course. LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog takes you through these changes, so you will have the tools you need to confidently pass the Dreamweaver CC 2015 exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Personal Productivity Courses Released!

We’re pleased to announce that in partnership with Kantola Productions, we’ve released the following new personal productivity soft skills courses:

  • Bullying and Respect in the Workplace
  • Customer Service Counts
  • Managing the Workplace Bully
  • Professional Email Etiquette
  • ART of Customer Service
  • Dealing with the Irate Customer
  • Leadership at Every Level
  • Listening Under Pressure
  • Social Media at Work
  • The Drug-Free Workplace
  • Wednesday’s Touch
  • Workplace Ethics

Bullying and Respect in the Workplace

In five dramatic stories taking place in settings that range from a hospital to City Hall, victims and witnesses will see how to speak up and challenge a coworker’s mean-spirited behavior in a straightforward way that earns them respect. They’ll also learn they do not have to face this problem alone. If they are not comfortable challenging a bully on their own—or if they do speak up and the behavior continues—they can reach out to supervisors, HR or other designated resources to help resolve the issues.

As for any bullies who may be watching: this video clearly shows that mistreating a fellow employee makes you look bad in the eyes of others and will not be tolerated in your workplace.

Customer Service Counts

Viewers will enjoy the amusing story of two coworkers who start their day experiencing bad customer service as customers themselves. Comparing notes, they enter a friendly competition to see who can offer the best customer service that day on the job. As they demonstrate sales skills and handle rushed (even unhappy) customers, their fun rivalry reminds employees that customers are people too. And it makes the point to employees that their peers are counting on them as well.

In fact, coworkers are also customers. Everyone has “internal customers” when helping other employees meet common goals. And every employee represents the organization when encountering outsiders, whether or not customer service is a major part of their job description.

Managing the Workplace Bully

Five realistic scenes in a range of workplaces show what to do when someone comes to you for help or if you notice repeated conflict among employees. You’ll learn how to step in right away and conduct effective conversations, calmly and professionally. You’ll see when it might be appropriate to reach out for help, especially in cases where discipline may be appropriate.

Use this program to learn how to stop bullying behavior and turn a dysfunctional environment into a healthy, productive and pleasant place to work.

Professional Email Etiquette

In spite of texting and other informal means of communication, business correspondence still counts. And email is still the preferred method of contact for sharing information and resolving problems. The impression you leave with others about the quality of your organization and your own personal competency is largely based on the courtesy and professionalism of your email correspondence. Workplace etiquette matters!

No matter how long you’ve been using email, you’ll learn some very important guidelines in this email training video—guidelines that will improve communication, protect you from catastrophes, and ensure your messages are professional, every time.

ART of Customer Service

Excellence in customer service boils down to three basic ideas: give customers the attention they want, the respect they deserve, and the time to answer their questions and take care of their needs. This newly revised customer service video uses humorous scenes mixed in with first-person responses to tell viewers what customers really want.

It seems so simple, yet today’s customers generally feel that service has gotten worse. Use this customer service video to bring the message home to your employees and make it stick: customer service is an ART.

Dealing with the Irate Customer

It’s hard to keep your cool when dealing with difficult or angry customers. After all, it’s only human to get defensive and fight back—or cave in and give them whatever they demand.
What you need instead is a plan.
The guidelines presented in this difficult customer video will help you calm angry customers. Once you bring them around, they’re more likely to work with you to find a resolution that solves their complaint yet is fair to your organization.

Leadership at Every Level

This leadership training video begins by demonstrating four successful management styles: direction, influence, collaboration, and delegation. It then explains how your setting and your subordinates determine which management style is most appropriate for your situation — and the need to adapt to changing circumstances.

Our dramatic scenes help you recognize leadership behaviors at all levels of an organization. You’ll learn how to exhibit leadership by making good decisions and keeping your own emotions under control. And you’ll learn the critical importance of personal integrity.
Leadership takes more than good management. And there’s no better time than right now for you to take it to the next level.

Listening Under Pressure

It’s easy to get sidetracked by coworkers, cell phones, other customers, and a hundred other things. Good listening skills are essential for meeting customer needs—and ensuring a positive experience with your organization.

In three entertaining and informative stories, you’ll learn the right and wrong ways to handle customer service challenges. You’ll learn how three specific listening skills can soothe upset customers; help you get the information you need to solve their problems; and keep your focus in spite of interruptions. Once you’ve mastered these crucial skills, great customer service will be second nature.

Social Media at Work

Social media is everywhere—including our workplaces. While it can serve useful business purposes, it can also open the door to hackers, circulate rumors and abusive comments, create public relations nightmares, and be a real drag on productivity.

In fact, many employees spend up to two hours every workday on non-business related websites—often not realizing how their multiple side-trips can consume their time and lead to other problems, as well. And it’s not just during the workday. After-hours posts can also have an impact if they violate policies or cause friction between coworkers.

The Drug-Free Workplace

Even if drug-free workplace training is not legally mandated in your business or industry, everyone benefits from raising employee awareness on the impact that drugs or alcohol can have on your workplace.

Performance and safety sink fast when employees abuse alcohol or drugs. Others may feel they have to take up the slack when their coworkers attempt to work under the influence—falling short of expectations and increasing the risk of accident or injury.

This brand new release features believable scenes in construction, manufacturing, hospitality, food service, and business. It raises your employees’ awareness of this widespread problem, shows the harm that can be done to themselves and others, and encourages them to get help if they or a coworker is affected by drug or alcohol abuse.

Wednesday’s Touch

Skills can be taught, but the right attitude is even more meaningful. This video, inspired by author and professional speaker Byrd Baggett, tells a simple but moving story about the importance of one customer service rep in the eyes of her customer. It inspires viewers to see that customers are people, too — and to build relationships that keep customers coming back.

Workplace Ethics

Ethics matter. It’s not just the big scandals you see in the news, but the small everyday decisions that add up, too. In fact, that’s where you need to draw the line—with the little things—before serious damage is done.
This award-winning employee ethics training video follows four realistic scenarios that demonstrate the importance of basic values such as respect for others, fairness, and honesty. And it teaches a three-part decision-making process that helps employees find their way to a solution even in complex situations where the right answer doesn’t come easily.

Employees all share the responsibility to act ethically and to speak up if they see coworkers behaving badly. Use this employee ethics training DVD or online video to raise awareness, provide a framework for ethical decision making, and help create a company that employees can be proud of.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Illustrator CC 2015 Test Prep Released

Today we released the third of our exam prep courses. LearnKey’s Illustrator CC 2015 Test Prep course is a complementary resource to go along with the Illustrator CC course, authored by Expert Lee Wiley. Although the Illustrator CC course readies you for the Illustrator CC exam, there are new objectives and types of test questions which are covered in the Illustrator CC 2015 Test Prep course. LearnKey Senior Instructor Jason Manibog takes you through these changes, so you will have the tools you need to confidently pass the Illustrator CC 2015 exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

PowerPoint 2016 Released

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our PowerPoint 2016 course. If you have the desire to be successful in the business world, a working knowledge of PowerPoint 2016 is a must. LearnKey expert Jason Manibog will teach you how to create and manage presentations, insert and format shapes and slides, apply transitions, and how to use the new screen recording feature. This course will also help you study and prepare to take the Microsoft’s PowerPoint 77-729 Certification exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

MTA OS Fundamentals Exam Update: Same Name, Same Number, Different…

…Oh, hello there! It’s me, your humble Senior Instructor. Today, I’m here to tell you about an update to the existing Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) 98-349 exam, otherwise known as the MTA OS Fundamentals exam.

The exam, which is tentatively scheduled to change later this month, is still going to focus on Operating System fundamentals, but is getting a “refresh” of sorts. Going away are topics specific to the operating system the exam has focused on, specifically Windows 7. Coming into the exam are topics specific to Windows 10. The exam is still geared toward those looking to learn about the setup and configuration of Windows. Gaining this certification will demonstrate that you have enough knowledge to install and configure Windows smoothly and efficiently and manage Windows installations and apps.

We will be putting our own “refresh” on our existing MTA OS Fundamentals as we will be updating the course this fall to match the new exam objectives. Speaking of objectives, this is not a complete list of what is entering or exiting the exam, but, I think you’ll agree that the theme of the exam is “out with the Windows 7 specifics and in with the Windows 10 specifics.” Here are some of the objective changes for the 98-349 exam:

LEAVING:

  • Gadgets
  • Aero configurations
  • Virtualized clients
  • Application virtualization
  • File Allocation Tables (FAT)
  • Cloud storage
  • Local, online, and automated backup methods

ENTERING:

  • File Explorer settings
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Cortana
  • Hyper-V
  • Operating system architecture
  • Windows 10 features
  • Libraries
  • Disk management
  • Windows Update options
  • Insider Preview
  • Current Branch

Our course “refresh” will involve brand new video courseware, a new project workbook full of exercises to reinforce these concepts, and a pre-assessment and post-assessment test for each exam domain. We look forward to bringing you yet another MTA course this fall!

MTA 98-375: HTML5 Application Development Course

Hello, everyone! Hope your summer is going well. This week, we are back in “filming” mode and the course we are filming is a course called HTML5 Application Development, which covers the material in the Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) 98-375 exam.

While the focus of this course is the exam material, it also serves as an excellent introductory HTML5 course. HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the markup language used to create webpages, like the one you are reading now. And this course covers version 5 of HTML, hence the HTML5 in the course title. We start with the very basics of HTML and then move on to some advanced HTML concepts. By the way, HTML5 makes it much, much easier to embed a video or audio clip inside of a webpage when compared to previous versions of HTML. That is just one of the many HTML5 features covered in this course.

Now, you may have noticed the words “Application Development” in the course title. Alas, HTML5 is not the only piece of HTML5 application development. To format and shape text on a page (by shape I mean boxes, rows, and columns when needed), we use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). An entire session of this course is dedicated to CSS version 3, or CSS3 for short. CSS3 is great for a concept called Responsive Web Design, which is the act of designing a webpage to where it will display well on something as large as a full screen, or, when needed, automatically move items around to display well on a 4-inch mobile device screen, all without having to build separate webpages for each.

Webpages are more interactive now than ever. HTML5 by itself is not interactive (well, if you count pressing a play button and having a video play, OK, a little interactive). Seriously, though, HTML5 is static in nature. To make webpages more interactive, we need to use a scripting language called JavaScript. JavaScript takes items on webpages and gives us a chance to make them interactive. And, this course covers introductory JavaScript concepts for both making webpages interactive on a full screen and on a mobile device.

Lastly, this course covers the introductory points on what it takes to put together, test, and debug a web application which has been built using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. At this point, you indeed are talking about a web application, not just a single webpage.

All of the material in this course, which includes several hours of video training, a pre-assessment and post-assessment test for each area of the course, a glossary, and a project workbook full of exercises to help you practice these concepts, serves two main purposes: to get you ready to pass the MTA 98-375 exam and gain a certification, and to get you job-ready skills needed for an introductory HTML5 Application Development position.

I will leave you with this thought: If you had any inclination of maybe learning about HTML application development as a whole, now is the time to learn! There will always be a demand for people who can build these applications. And, having first learned HTML in the (let’s just say a previous decade), HTML has come a long way. We really have a “less is more” situation now, meaning with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, we can write less code than before yet produce more quality content for webpages. Now I call that a win-win.

The New Cisco ICND Series: Some More Details

Hello, everyone! So many releases have happened recently I’ve taken a break from this blog space. But, I’m back and here to tell you some more details about the new Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices (ICND) exams, specifically exams 100-105 and 200-105. Both courses are slated for a fall release and will each include several hours of video training, pre-assessment tests, and post-assessment tests — all with the purpose of getting you ready to pass these two exams.

In these two courses, we are happy to inform you we are working with Boson’s NetSim, a top-quality simulator tool for Cisco exams and we will be featuring this product in many of the demonstrations in the course videos.

Let’s start with the ICND part one exam, exam 100-105. Many have wondered about the differences between this exam and its predecessor, exam 100-101. I have examined both objective sheets, studied this carefully, and here is a general view of what has changed from the old ICND part 1 exam to the new one (in no particular order):

  • RIPv2 for IPv4 (configure, verify, and troubleshoot). This is the only dynamic routing protocol featured prominently on the ICND1 exam.
  • OSPF (speaking of routing protocols) has been moved to the ICND2 exam.
  • Be able to configure and verify host routes and floating static routes.
  • LAN Design and Architecture are featured, with star, mesh, and hybrid topologies being the prominent topologies mentioned.
  • Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is now covered (in addition to Cisco Discovery Protocol).
  • Device monitoring using syslog is now on the ICND1 exam instead of the ICND2 exam.
  • Device management is now on the ICND1 exam instead of the ICND2 exam.
  • Frame Relay is gone from this series.

Overall, the objective list for this exam is slightly larger than that of the 100-101 exam. Passing this exam will get you a Cisco Certified Entry Level Network Technician (CCENT) certification, get you halfway to the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching certification, and satisfy the prerequisite for several other Cisco exams.

Now, on to the new ICND part two (200-105) exam, which replaces the 200-101 exam. Here are the general differences from the old to the new ICND part two exam:

  • Frame Relay is gone (just in case you didn’t hear me say it the first time).
  • Most management topics have been moved to the ICND1 exam.
  • Gateway Load Balancing Protocol (GLBP) and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) are gone.
  • Layer 3 EtherChannel – Routed Interface needs to be known in order to handle other exam topics.
  • Be able to configure Multilink Point-to-Point Protocol (MLPPP).
  • Be able to configure, verify, and troubleshoot Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels.
  • Be able to describe Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Networks (DMVPN).
  • Be able to configure and verify single-home branch connectivity using External Border Gateway Protocol (eBGP) IPv4. This is the only BGP objective on the exam.
  • Understand cloud services including virtualized services and the basics of a virtual network infrastructure.
  • Know Quality of Service (QoS) concepts, including managing congestion of traffic and prioritization of traffic.
  • Know the difference between control planes and data planes.

All of these exam topics will be covered in our Cisco ICND courses. The purpose of this blog is simple: to draw out the differences in the two exams for the old ICND series and this new series. Good luck!

Excel 2016 Released

Today, we are excited to announce the release of our Excel 2016 course. If you are looking to start a career in business or finance, having a working knowledge of Microsoft’s Excel 2016 is a must. Our new and exciting course taught by LearnKey’s Senior Instructor, Jason Manibog, will teach you how to reveal insights hidden in your data with the help of new features such as the Tell Me feature, chart options, and more! This course will also help you study and prepare to take the Microsoft’s Excel 77-727 Certification exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

Word 2016 Released

We are excited to announce the release of our Word 2016 course. If you are working toward becoming career-ready you must have a working knowledge of Word 2016. LearnKey expert Jason Manibog will teach the basic concepts of Microsoft Word and build on those ideas to help you master this program. This course will teach you how to create and manage documents, and format text, paragraphs, and sections. This course will also help you study and prepare to take the Microsoft Word 77-725 Certification exam.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.

IC3 Spark Released

Today we are excited to announce the release of our IC3 Spark course. LearnKey’s IC3 Spark course is focused on teaching younger students the basic foundational knowledge covered in LearnKey’s IC3 GS5 training. Join LearnKey expert Wyett Ihler for over 2 hours of online video training and project-based activities. Students will learn a broad range of computing knowledge and skills including: software, hardware, operating systems, key applications, and living online.

Our hope is that through our courseware we may provide learners with the guidance, preparation, and skills they need to succeed. For more information and to learn about additional LearnKey products visit our website.