Cisco News Alert: Exam Changes Coming!

Here’s a story for you all: While trying to hustle out of the house yesterday to get to work and continue filming our upcoming PowerPoint 2016 course, I got an email message from a coworker asking me “are we up to speed on the upcoming CCENT and CCNA changes?” My first reaction was “Am I…what? What changes?”

Understand that, as the LearnKey Senior Instructor, one of my duties is to scan the Microsoft, CompTIA, and Cisco websites for exam changes (and I do this every week to 10 days). In fact, I was just on the Cisco website last week. I must have been in between scans because, sure enough, I went to the Cisco website, and, there they were, announcements on new exams, and, more importantly, retirement dates for current Cisco exams.

So, after some further investigation, here is what we discovered: First, no Cisco certifications are changing. But, several exams are indeed being replaced. Here is the story, in a nutshell:

Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices (ICND) Part 1: The current exam is exam 100-101. The new exam is exam 100-105 (and yes, it is out there). The last day to test on exam 100-101 is August 20, 2016.

Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices (ICND) Part 2: The current exam is exam 200-101. The new exam is exam 200-105 (and yes, it is out there, too). The last day to test on exam 200-101 is September 24, 2016.

Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching: The current exam is exam 200-120. The new exam is exam 200-125 (also out). The last day to test on exam 200-120 is August 20, 2016.

What has not changed: The ICND Part 1 exam will still get you the Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT) certification. And, the ICND Part 1 plus the ICND Part 2 exams will still get you the CCNA certification, with the option of just taking the 200-125 exam instead.

With this information, we at LearnKey have already gone to work in updating our Cisco curriculum. In fact, look for an updated ICND Part 1 exam course early this fall, followed by an updated Cisco Implementing Network Security (IINS) course for exam 210-260 (another new recent exam), followed by an updated ICND Part 2 exam course. I will have some details of these courses in a future blog entry. In the meantime, here is the link to the details on these changes: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/ccna-rs-certification.

For now, those of you studying for the CCENT or CCNA Routing and Switching exam have about three months to complete your certifications under the current exam versions.

Leaders Making Contributions That Make a Difference!

Leadership sometimes requires people to get out of their comfort zones and when you ask them to do that, it’s really sometimes asking them to take a leap of faith. They have to trust you, they have to take on additional responsibilities, they have to look past the short-term benefits and make sacrifices for the good of the company and believe in the long-term value. Just over a year ago, I asked two people in our Better Learning Systems/LearnKey organization to take that leap of faith with me to believe in something that had never been done and to trust the people and process we were about to embrace, and I can honestly say that the successful partnership LearnKey has recently solidified with GMetrix and Certiport it has allot to do with key contributions from Kim Johnson and Wyett Ihler.

So it gives me great pleasure to announce that both Kim and Wyett are the recipients of our 2016 Key Contributor award voted by their peers! They have truly displayed our core values Ease, Value and Trust throughout this entire project that has required 100% of their efforts for the past twelve (12) months.

In addition to their day-to-day responsibilities, both of them have worked together in tandem to not only successfully roll out our new product, but do it in a way that is good for the company. The work required migrating our certification courseware through an entire reformatting process, quality control testing, sales re-training, and learning a new delivery system. They did it with passion and a “can-do attitude.” They had a lot of help from other LearnKey team members and that required getting those team members to buy into the same leap of faith, that this partnership is going to benefit students, teachers, and learners through providing the ultimate learning experience.

Congratulations to both of them for their commitment to our core values!

Our Third Office 2016 Course: PowerPoint 2016

Hello there! With all of the activity the past couple of weeks here, from the release of the A+ 220-902 series to the release of the Photoshop CC 2015 Test Prep course, I haven’t had the space to tell you about the third of our “major” three Office 2016 courses, PowerPoint 2016, due out this summer, along with Excel 2016 and Word 2016.

The PowerPoint 2016 course will have some features similar to the Excel 2016 and Word 2016 courses, in that the course will contain real-life examples businesses use (in fact, we are using the same fictitious business we used in the Excel 2016 and Word 2016 courses) and will help one prepare for the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) exam for PowerPoint 2016.

This course will have several hours of video training, a large assortment of practice labs, a project workbook with practice exercises, and pre-assessment and post-assessment tests to help you learn valuable skills not just for the MOS exam, but to be job-ready for any position needing PowerPoint skills.

There is one subtle difference with this course when compared to Excel 2016 or Word 2016 though, and that is for this course, we will, for the most part, be building a single presentation from start to finish, covering the important elements of PowerPoint along the way. This is a slight contrast to the Excel and Word courses, where in those courses we used many different files to cover the concepts for those programs.

And before I leave you today, I would like to share with you my favorite new feature for PowerPoint 2016: The Screen Recording feature, found on the Insert tab. This feature allows you to, when on a PowerPoint slide, actually record video of what you do on the screen and embed that video into your presentation. This is a great way to show a coworker (or that relative who always calls you with a computer problem) how to do something, step-by-step through video. Quite often, a video will explain things in a better fashion than will a step-by-step manual. Which would explain one reason we do video-based training around here, wouldn’t it?

Learn From an Expert: Jason Manibog and Excel 2016

What runs through your mind when you think about Microsoft Excel? Personally, my relationship with Excel has been complicated and ranges from avoiding it at all costs to using it excessively. I have found Excel to be a useful tool for tracking personal finances and information, as well as making lists and daily schedules. I know many people may feel apprehensive about learning Excel, so I thought, who better to provide some positive insight than Jason Manibog our in-house IT expert? Recently, I visited with Jason and asked him if he could give us some advice that would be beneficial to new users of Excel. Whether you are learning Excel purely for certification purposes, or for more efficient personal use, be sure to read Jason’s feedback below.

What advice would you give to a user new to Excel? I would start with (of course) viewing our Excel 2016 course! But to start working with Excel? I would start with building a simple file or two for something you can relate to, like a phone list of family and friends, or a budget or expenses sheet with calculations. Most importantly, make the files YOUR files as in something you can relate to.
What type of student did you have in mind when you were creating this course? Someone trying to learn Excel and perhaps looking toward passing the Microsoft Office (MOS) 2016 Excel exam. And, someone who is trying to get important job-ready skills in Excel. The practice files are really geared toward the job-ready aspect of training.
If a student has very little experience using Excel, how would you recommend they start using our training? Start with the very first part of the course and make sure to mix the video training with the practice exercises in the project workbook which accompanies the course.
What are some common uses for Excel that people can use their new Excel skills for? The list is large. I would say lists, budgets, expense sheets, workout logs, golf scores (had to throw that in), or anything else that involves building a list and then, when needed, analyzing that data through charts and calculations.
What are some of the new features in Excel 2016? There are a few, but the two which stand out to me are the “Tell Me” feature, which I brought up in a previous blog. The “Tell Me” feature allows one to search for a “How-To” and then get the actual tasks to do. For example, I can do a “Tell Me” search on “Get the Average of data” and it will lead me right to the AVERAGE function. Also, for those of you who like charts, there are several new chart types in Excel 2016, so analyze away!