Category: Education
ACTE 2012 Recap
The ACTE conference in Atlanta was a huge hit For LearnKey. Jeff, Lori, Kim, Scott and I were able to re-solidify the fact that we are on the right track. The track of preparing teachers first for certifications and then taking that knowledge gained and marrying it with our award winning full motion video, hands on projects created by teachers that align directly to Adobe and Microsoft objectives, mobile technology alerts and the constant mentoring of teachers so that they are up on technology as well as behavioral assessments to best pinpoint career pathways for students. All these lessons learned over the past 27 years are now a road map for teachers to make sure that each student is successful in their life quest.
It was so good to see school district administrators and teachers embracing the fact that businesses and community partnerships are valuable in many different ways. The more involvement that you have with people from a broad spectrum of knowledge, the better the result is for the students. New and innovative ideas are what is going to drive success in the classroom and ultimately engage and empower the student to go on and do great things.
It was great to see how “Team LearnKey” interacted with partners and clients as well as with one another to bring digital literacy into the classroom.
Oh yeah, we ate a lot of great food and also went to an Atlanta hawks basketball game and had a good time. We were able to sit behind Danny ferry, the Duke “hall of famer” who won the Naismith College Player of the Year and Oscar Robinson Trophy award winner in 1989 and his #35 jersey was retired after his senior season in 1989.
Home Sweet Home
Atlanta, New Orleans, Indianapolis, and…St. George, Utah? You may be wondering what St. George could possibly have in common to be included in a list with these large cities. Well, before the end of the year LearnKey will be in each of these cities attending trade shows and sharing our training with local teachers and administrators.
Today and tomorrow we are in our hometown St. George, UT! We don’t often attend shows in Utah, let alone in St. George, and we have a new booth design and will be doing presentations today and tomorrow – so stop by Desert Hills High School and check us out.
Presentation Times
Saturday
9:00 am Mobi Mentoring in the Classroom
11:00 am Leveraging Classroom Behavior
1:00 pm Industry Certified or Career Ready? LearnKey Can Do Both
3:00 pm Mobi Mentoring in the Classroom
Career Readiness Bundle now available
We recently put together a new bundle which is perfect for high school students or people just starting out in the job market – the Career Readiness Bundle. This collection of courses teaches life and career skills important to succeeding in the business world. 12 new courses produced in partnership with Human Relations Media were released to be included in this bundle, and we added our previously released Know Your Talents™ course to the mix as well.
Included in the bundle:
- Ten Easy Ways to KEEP Your Job
- What’s Your Attitude? Getting in the Mood to Work
- Communication Skills in the Workplace
- Business Ethics on the Job
- Making a Good Impression: Resumes, Interviews, and Appearance
- Matching Your Skills, Talents, and Ambitions to a Dream Career
- Think Before You Click: Playing it Safe Online
- Workplace Etiquette: Why Being Polite Counts on the Job
- The Seven Competency Skills for the Workplace
- B Careful When U TXT: The Dangers of Texting and Sexting
- Me and My 500 “Friends”: Staying Safe on Social Networks
- The Dangers of Sexting: What Teens Need to Know
- Know Your Talents™
Visit learnkey.com/careerreadiness for more information about the bundle and the courses included. As always, if you’re a current LearnKey customer, just give your favorite sales or customer service rep a call and they’ll make sure to get it added to your library!
Mobile Mentoring for Teachers
When it comes to using LearnKey courseware, most of our offerings have been student-focused, with tools for teachers typically being on the delivery side built into the LMS. In our goal to make our courseware easier to implement in the classroom, LearnKey has been working with our sister company LearnCast to provide more tools for teachers, and recently launched Mobile Mentoring – a tool that utilizes online and mobile technology to help facilitate learning.
Here are some of the features of LearnKey’s Mobile Mentoring:
- Powered by LearnCast, a world-class mobile learning platform
- Course-specific mobile instructional mentoring
- Tips from author on key objectives and coverage of topics
- Course-specific projects for students
- Mobi Alerts ensure your lesson stays on track
- Social engagement – interactive chat within each course
- Quizzes and exams
- Best practices for online learning
- Teacher and student sessions delivered to any mobile device
- Monthly polling and rapid feedback
If you’re interested in adding Mobile Mentoring to your teaching arsenal, give your LearnKey representative a call at 1-800-865-0165, or read more about it at learnkey.com/mobilementoring
Case study: Houston ISD
Not only do we love hearing success stories from teachers who found ways to implement LearnKey courseware into their curriculum, but we know that information also helps others by showing real-world examples of how the program works.
Margaret Williams from Barbara Jordan Career High School was kind enough to tell us her story about how implementing LearnKey courseware helped her students pass their certification exams in this case study. Here is an excerpt from that document:
All of my students, (100%) passed the Word and PowerPoint certification exams first try without books during the fall semester. The e-Learning online instruction helped me to individualize instruction. It is based on the students’ learning styles. It provides virtual, interactive learning with video (which includes certification objectives in an outline format), guided practice, and independent practice activities. It helps students to develop a thorough understanding of the Microsoft certification objectives.
Do you have a success story for us? Share it in the comments or post it on our Facebook Timeline!
New Products for a New School Year
Remember how I promised all you teachers out there that LearnKey would be releasing some really awesome new tools to use in your classrooms? Well consider that promised fulfilled, because we will be releasing brand new course projects and the A+ workbook, both made specifically for you and ready to use for the 2012/2013 school year!
As many of you know, our new A+ 2012 course was released at the end of July. We were excited to introduce Tom Carpenter as the new face and author of A+ 2012. Tom is a great fit for teaching this course because he has hands on experience teaching A+ to high school students, preparing them for the A+ exam. Tom also has 15 years of training, 20 years of work experience in IT and has also written 14 IT related books through McGraw-Hill and Sybex.
Included with the course is a new course workbook, and one exciting thing about the A+ workbook is that it was written by Tom Carpenter specifically for LearnKey. Teachers should be excited about this because Tom personally made sure that the workbook is mapped to our A+ course. Included in the workbook are application projects that provide learning opportunities that will prepare students for the A+ exam. The workbook also includes some bonus information not included in the course that expands upon concepts that are presented, and lesson plans which can be used as a guide to teach the course. We are really happy with the work that Tom put into the workbook and know that it will be a great asset to the A+ teaching experience.
Our next big end of summer release is the teacher projects, made by teachers for teachers. Much of the feedback that we were getting from teachers was that they wished we had more projects that were more hands on and really reinforce skills that their students need to receive their certification. We heard this feedback and are happy to say that since June we have had teachers who use our courses in their classrooms create projects that will be available to all LK teachers to use.
The team here at LearnKey has been working really hard all summer to make sure that these awesome new features would be ready to go by the time you go back to school. I am really proud of all of the work that has gone into these projects and I am positive that they will be a great benefit to your classroom.
Hot as a Billy Goat in a Pepper Patch
This week I had the opportunity to go to the great state of Texas and attend the Texas Career Education Conference. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Texas so y’all may find that some Texas talk made its way into this post. Jared Baker, one of LearnKey’s “road warriors”, was nice enough to let me go to the show with him for the week and really help me see what happens on the front lines. Thinking back on this week, three things come to mind: Hot tempertures, tasty food, and amazing people.
Coming from Southern Utah I didn’t think that the weather in Dallas would be anything to blink an eye at, but when we walked out of the airport it was hot–darn hot! Heat I am able to handle, but mixed with humidity made being outside downright uncomfortable.
Not much can compare to the bbq, mexican food, or creole food that has been perfected across Texas. But one thing that is a secret to non-Texans is Blue Bell Ice Cream. I had this for the first time this week and I can honestly say that it is the best ice cream I have ever had.
The highlight of my trip was not the food and definitely not the weather – it was the great teachers that I was able to interact with at the show. The first day of the show was on Tuesday and I was scared as a sinner in a cyclone to talk with the teachers. Luckily for me I realized that I had no reason to worry and I had a fantastic time. I loved hearing about how teachers are using LearnKey in the classroom.
How do you use LearnKey in the classroom? Let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page!
Share your story!
We love to hear people’s success stories. Whether you’re a teacher implementing LearnKey courseware in your classroom, or you’re a learner yourself using LearnKey courseware to advance your career, It’s a great feeling to know something we created made an impact in someone’s life.
That’s why we want you to share your stories! Let us know how our courseware helped you land that new job, or how blending eLearning in your classroom raised your pass rates, or how implementing a training program helped increase productivity at your business. We may even choose your testimonial to be featured on our website!
How to submit your story
Submit your story to one of our social media profiles:
- Facebook: Leave a post on our Timeline, or create a post on your own and tag us by adding @LearnKey
- Twitter: Create a Tweet, including us by adding @LearnKey
- Google+: Create a post, and tag us by adding +LearnKey
…or leave a comment on this post with your story. Be sure to include which courses were involved and if any certifications were earned using our courseware.
We’re not picky about the format either – you can type it out, record a video, include pictures, whatever you want to do!
Connecting the Dots to Blended Learning (infographic)
At LearnKey, we support K-12 learning in several ways, but many teachers aren’t sure integrating technology into the classroom actually pays off. That’s why we’ve come up with this handy infographic!
Do any of you have success stories about how blended learning helped your students? Or maybe a unique way you’re integrating online learning into your curriculum? Let us know in the comments!
Are you excited for the end of summer? You should be!
I know what you are thinking – “Why is this guy talking about the end of summer when summer has just begun?” Well, as promised in my last blog post I want to keep you up-to-date with some of the exciting happenings at LearnKey this summer. Here is a little sneak peek of some awesome OnlineExpert features to look forward to over the next couple of months.
Learning Management System (LMS) Tour
This free instructional course teaches educators and administrators how to easily access, use, and learn the functions of OnlineExpert. The LMS tour is broken into manageable sections, which allows users to easily find and watch material that is relevant to their needs.
This is one feature you don’t have to wait for – the LMS Tour was just recently released! Since it is free, current customers can easily have our representatives add it to their course libraries.
Projects
Teachers: We have listened to your requests – “More hands-on activities!” We are excited to announce that our Office 2007/2010, Adobe ACA, and IC³ courses will feature hands-on projects created by teachers who use our courses in their curriculum. These projects will help reinforce what students are learning by providing them with hands-on experience throughout the course.
Touchscreen support
In the past, our courses have made heavy use of Flash video and players, which certain mobile devices don’t support. Since these devices are becoming more and more popular in learning environments, OnlineExpert will allow students and teachers to use mobile devices as a learning tool with new touchscreen support beginning in August.
I am excited to be able to share these upcoming releases with everyone. After all, don’t we all need a good reason to actually look forward to the end of summer? Be sure to check back often for the down low on what’s going on at LearnKey.
I love getting comments, so here’s a question for you – What are your favorite summer traditions or vacation spots?