LearnKey Blog

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?

Sweet “Temporary” Home Alabama…

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Alabama with Justin, our newest member of the sales team, to attend an education conference and meet with teachers interested in eLearning and industry certifications. Here is a brief overview of our travels:

Wednesday

Beautiful weather in Bessemer, Alabama where we stayed. We spent some time in Tuscaloosa, meeting with a teacher working with students and passing the CompTIA exams like A+ and Network+. We showed him the teaser clip to our upcoming A+ 2012 release and he’s really looking forward to it.

We also had the pleasure of visiting The University of Alabama, which has a beautiful campus. We found a great place called The Mellow Mushroom, and had some of the best pizza I have ever eaten. We had a Cesar Salad pizza…yes I know salad on top of a pizza, and yes it was amazing!

Thursday

The first day of our education conference and 2 hour workshop for teachers went really well. The conference was hosted at the Mercedes factory located in Vance, Alabama. This location is the manufacturing facility where the M-Class, the R-Class, and the GL-Class are built. Our conference was located in the training center for the employees, the landscape is so beautiful and we had a chance walk through the visitors center and gift shop where I picked up a few souvenirs.

Continue reading “Sweet “Temporary” Home Alabama…”

New “Certify for Life” program available for Veterans

We have recently implemented a new program for veterans who certify through our Veteran Services program – it’s called Certify for Life. This is an excellent new program that can help save veterans hundreds if not thousands of dollars throughout the course of their career.

The way this program can help save veterans money is by giving them free courseware updates for the rest of their life. So, in four to five years when technology advances and makes certain certifications out of date, the veteran doesn’t have to pay for courseware again, they don’t have to try to get the VA to cover the courses and they don’t have to pay out of pocket either – all they have to do is call LearnKey and let them know that they are in the Certify for Life program and LearnKey will get them set up with the current courseware in their area of study for free.

eLearning Company Announces Free Training for U.S. Veterans

LearnKey’s “Certify for Life” program enables qualified U.S. veterans to receive video-based training, free of charge, after they’ve completed their initial training certifications through VA-sponsored programs such as VR&E and VRAP.

ST. GEORGE, UT, May 11, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ — LearnKey, a global provider of self-paced online training, today announced “Certify for Life,” a new program that provides free education for qualifying U.S. veterans. Certify for Life is available to veterans who participate in Vocational Rehabilitation & Employment (VR&E), Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP) and VOW to Hire Heroes programs offered through the Veterans Administration.

Read the full press release

Visit veterans.learnkey.com for more information on our Veteran Services program.

A+ 2012 Filming

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to the Salt Lake City office to see some of the filming of our newest CompTIA A+ Certification courseware – presented by Tom Carpenter. Tom has presented quite a few of our IT courses, and if you’ve ever taken one of them before, you know that he’s a great choice to take the lead on the next version of LearnKey’s most popular courseware series. If you haven’t seem Tom in action, watch this video in which he discusses our Voice over IP Fundamentals course:

From what I’ve seen, this course is going to be one of the best, most engaging courses LearnKey has ever produced. Our production teams are going all out to make it entertaining as well as educational, so if you’ve been wanting to get your A+ certification, you’ll definitely want to stick around for this release.

For more video clips, check out our YouTube Channel. Tom has presented many LearnKey courses, so there are plenty of videos to choose from if you would like to dive in.

…and of course, there is always the infamous Blooper Reel!

Veteran benefits provide certifications and new job skills through LearnKey courseware

I just want to write a few words about a friend of mine that I met through our VA vocational rehabilitation program. Chris and I were introduced over this last summer when he began using the LearnKey program to advance his IT career. At the time, he was working in an IT role, but in a limited, part time position. Over several months of interaction, I have come to think of Chris as a friend as our whole group has been following his progress and cheering his success. In January, I was able to meet Chris face to face as he came into our recording studio to shoot a testimonial video. It was a great experience to get better acquainted and to learn that Chris served as a combat engineer in Baghdad, the same role in which my father served during WW2.

Continue reading “Veteran benefits provide certifications and new job skills through LearnKey courseware”

LearnKey, now a Better Learning Systems company

Good news, everyone! It was just announced that LearnKey is now a Better Learning Systems company.

What does this mean for you? As a parent company, Better Learning Systems oversees three brands – LearnKey, LearnCast, and Predix. Each company will continue to operate with their current branding, but the new partnership allows us to expand each others’ offerings in a way we could have never done before. LearnKey customers now have access to LearnCast’s mobile learning and publishing platform, and the Know Your Talents™ behavioral learning system powered by Predix.

Continue reading “LearnKey, now a Better Learning Systems company”

What’s Your New Year’s Resolution?

At the beginning of every year, people from all over the world make a vow to improve their lives. Sure, you can say things like “I’m losing weight!” or “I’m going to exercise more!” like millions of others, but unfortunately most people don’t stick with it. So, with typical New Year’s Resolution failure rates extremely high, why not try something new this year – get a certification or gain a new job skill.

As several studies in the past few years have concluded, employers claim they can’t find enough qualified people to fill the available jobs. If there is a lack of qualified job candidates, that means the qualified ones will stand out even more than before. That means that if you’re qualified, your chance at landing the job you’re after just skyrocketed.

See for yourself – take a look at the job results when you search for “A+ Certification”.

Want to learn Adobe Photoshop? Here are some jobs requiring Photoshop skills.

Mobile apps are huge right now – and they all need skilled developers to create them. Here are some Mobile App Developer jobs.

I’m not going to lie, mastering a new skill and gaining a certification takes dedication and focus. It’s not something you can set aside an hour every few weeks to work on, you really have to work at it. The same rule applies to pretty much anything that will improve your life, though. Want to lose weight? You’re going to have to put some serious time in at the gym and watch what you eat. Working out for a few minutes once every two months won’t cut it.

So if you really want to work on adding new skills to your résumé, why not get started now? Who knows, maybe once you land that new job, you’ll get more free time to focus on some of your previous resolutions!

LearnKey Supports Fight Against Bullying

In our support of the fight against bullying, we are giving all of our education customers our Bullying: You Don’t Have To Take It Anymore course for free! Over the last few years a light has been put on the problems that young men and women face because of bullying. This light has given us an idea of just how bad the problem really is.

We are giving our support in hopes that this course will be used as a tool to help kids understand how they can help stop bullying in their schools. The more kids understand and know the more they will be able to recognize bullying and help put a stop to it.

*Edit 1/31/12*
Our current Education customers should already see our “Bullying…” course in their library. If you are not a current LearnKey customer and are interested, call 1.800.865.0165 or leave a comment on this blog (using a valid name and email address) and we’ll send you access to the course absolutely free.

Read the full press release here:

LearnKey’s Efforts to Support the Fight Against Bullying with Online Training

St. George, UT- January 30, 2012- LearnKey, an online training company based in Utah, has announced that all educators will have access to their Bullying: You Do Not Have to Take It Anymore course for free.

The company is showing support for the fight against bullying by supplying all of their education customers with the course for free. In addition if there are any educators that are not current customers who are interested in the course, the company will give you free access to the course as well.

In recent years the concern over bullying that is taking place in schools has been spotlighted by the media, and schools are responding with new programs to help eliminate bullying. LearnKey is hoping that, by offering this free tool, they are helping to do their part in the fight against bullying.

“Studies show child/teen bullying and cyberbullying are at an all-time high and as many as 160,000 students stay home on any given day because they fear being bullied,” said LearnKey CEO Jeff Coruccini. “We have a responsibility to support the fight against bullying and this is our way of supporting that cause”.

For more information about LearnKey or the Bullying: You Do Not Have to Take It Anymore course, please contact us at 800.865.0165.

About LearnKey
Established in 1987, LearnKey is self-paced online and offline training for corporate, education, government and personal users. LearnKey has decades of experience in the professional development arena. LearnKey offers interactive, engaging, and flexible training that is accessible anytime, anywhere. LearnKey course concentration areas include Networking, IT Technical, Web & Graphic Design, Leadership, Management, Safety and Compliance, Medical CE, K12 and Character Development.

Veteran Certification on Veterans Day


Showing support at the 2011 St. George Veteran’s Day Parade

LearnKey has been working with the VA VR&E (Vocational Rehab and Employment) program for the last year. The VR&E program is specifically for those veterans who have partial service related disability and the goal is to help the veteran find suitable employment and careers. We offer a number of courses and bundled program packages for the veterans which range from Web design, Graphic design, Cisco Pro, Video production, SharePoint, Office 2010, QuickBooks, CompTIA, Project Management, Database design, Windows Server, etc. We even help the veterans to find jobs with employers where they will truly fit in with the company culture.

I wanted you to know that just yesterday, we had one of the veterans we work with certify in CPEH (Certified Professional Ethical Hacker)! Chris L. has been studying using his LearnKey program that was provided by the VR&E program at the VA. He has been working hard and that work is certainly paying off. He is the first veteran in our program to attempt the CPEH and he will soon take the CPTE (Certified Pen. Testing Engineer) exam. Great job and good timing Chris, you managed to get that certification just in time for Veterans Day!