Category: Education
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?
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.
LearnKey First Quarter rollout of enhanced courses and products for 2012!
It is starting to be really busy with our LearnKey 2012 production shoot schedule, and I’m very excited with some of our new courses and exams recently released the past three weeks. It started with our February 2012 release of our Advanced Security Practitioner Certification (CASP) course designed to provide students with an explanation and understanding of conceptualization of security topics, as well as theoretical instruction/demonstrations in designing and engineering security solutions. This training course prepares students for the CompTIA exam CAS-001. LearnKey Expert course instructor Tom Carpenter does a very thorough and solid job covering the key objectives.
Earlier this week we successfully released our Flash CS5 MasterExam™ that helps IT certification candidates put the finishing touches on their comprehension and confidence as a final step before sitting for the exam. With over 200 questions, this supplements the training and hands-on experience needed to pass the Adobe® Certified Associate (ACA) Rich Media Communication with Adobe® Flash® certification exam.
Another release this week is our PowerPoint 2010 MasterExam 77-883 which is a great way to assess the skills of your staff with the individual components of PowerPoint 2010. Increase productivity by discovering and correcting skill deficiencies, or to find out how proficient prospective employees are before you hire them.
We ended the week releasing our Dreamweaver CS5 MasterExam™ with over 200 questions that supplements the training and hands-on experience needed to pass the Adobe® Certified Associate (ACA) Web Communication with Adobe® Dreamweaver® certification exam.
Over the next couple of weeks I will share with you our 2012 Production release schedule for the remainder of the year. One teaser I can share with you is a very exciting course we plan to release about leveraging behavior – a perfect life skills and career readiness topic.
We are off to a great start, and I promise to keep you posted on our most recent product releases!
Barbeque and an Arch – ACTE 2011 Recap
Recently I traveled to the annual ACTE conference that was held in St. Louis, MO. I traveled with all guys from our company, and it has been pretty interesting trying to keep them all on task and under control!
Travel
It was a great experience; we arrived on Tuesday afternoon and had a great evening relaxing after our long day of traveling that consisted of a two hour car ride to the Las Vegas Airport, about a minute train ride to the gate, then a three hour flight to St. Louis, a five minute bus ride to the rental car counter, and a fifteen minute drive to the hotel. Yes, you read that right; excluding a boat we pretty much covered all modes of transportation.
Set-up and event
The next day it was time to head over to the booth and set-up. Everything went well and thanks to Kari, our graphic designer, the booth we have takes about an hour to set-up. As we headed out to the parking garage, we noticed a sign that said cash only. Living in the modern age that we do it was shocking and of course we had no cash on us. Well we talked the nice parking attendant (I won’t name her just in case her boss by a small chance reads this) into letting us out on the honor that we would bring her back the two dollars we owed her. We went and got some supplies and brought the money right back to her.
That night we held a reception at our hotel; it went off without a hitch and everyone had a great time. So thank you to everyone who attended the event and to everyone who helped make it a success!
Show Time and chow
So on Thursday it was time to get down to business and start talking with all of the wonderful educators that made it out to this year’s show. It was a great show with a lot of enthusiastic people and a great energy. People were loving the giveaways, and of course gobbling up the Dots candies that we put out.
After a really long day on our feet, we all decided that when in St. Louis you better eat some BBQ. So we asked around and got a tip that Pappy’s Smokehouse was the best place in town, but that we better make it there pretty early because once they run out of stuff it is just gone. We got lost, but eventually found our way there and boy was it worth it. We ordered the Adam Bomb named after Adam Richmond from the television show Man vs. Food. It was a lot of really good food and we all ate way too much, but everyone was in consensus that they would recommend it to anyone who ever visits St. Louis. The food was so good that we ended up getting another Adam Bomb for take out on Friday.
We made our way back home and back to the LearnKey offices. Sad to leave our new friends and the great food, but excited to be back home!
A few pictures from the event:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
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.
Dallas Trip – Big Hats and Big Hearts
Dallas is one amazing place! I have fallen in love with Texas and had the pleasure of working with amazing people again this last week.
Monday – Airport Re-Route
I had an exciting start Monday night with only 30 minutes left until our arrival in Dallas-Ft. Worth; we received an announcement from the pilot that the airport had been closed due to bad weather! WHAT? Well we quickly stopped for gas in Wichita Falls and finally arrived in Ft. Worth around 12:40 AM, only to wait in line to allow all planes to drop off passengers all at the same time. I finally deplaned around 1:40 AM and then made a mad dash to the Rental Car center…
I have a picture of LEO the Lizard on the dash of my rental car at 2:05 AM in a line of about 15 cars trying to leave the airport rental check out.
ACTE 2011
Well, it’s that time of year again. No, I am not talking about the Holiday Season, I am talking about the Annual ACTE Conference. This year’s conference is taking place in St. Louis, MO November 17-19, 2011. It might seem like we are early writing this blog post, but we started planning for this show a couple of months ago and I am starting to get really excited about it. We have exhibited at this trade show in the past and it is always a fun and rewarding event to attend.
If you have never heard of ACTE before, it is the Association for Career and Technical Education. They hold an annual convention every year that draws over 4,000 educators and over 200 exhibitors. The highlight of the conference will be that Sir Ken Robinson will be speaking, if you have not heard him you should check him out on his website. This animated video created from one of his speeches is a particular favorite of ours.
If you are going to attend this years ACTE conference, be sure to come see LearnKey at booth 428!
Online Education as Good as Traditional?
A recent New York Times article caught our attention. The article is about research that was done over a period of 12 years about the effectiveness of online education in K12 and college settings. The study set out to answer a question on many people’s minds – does online education work as well as classroom education?
According to the results, the answer is “yes, even better”. There were some interesting findings that came out of the 99 studies, including that the report found that “online education could be set to expand sharply as evidence mounts of its value.”
Read the full New York Times article here.
Have you ever taken online courses? How were they different from classes you have taken in person? Do you prefer one method over the other? Why?
OnlineExpert Helps Teachers with Increased Accountability
I am glad to be back in the office after a whirlwind travel week and on location training. Only nine airports in five days, but I did manage to sneak over to the beach for five minutes for this picture:
This was an informative trip, and it gave me insight about what teachers need for their students in the 2011-2012 school year. They expressed concerns that they are more accountable than ever this year when it comes to getting their students industry certified. It was an added bonus in the past for their students to achieve industry certifications. Now these programs are being measured, and programs could be cut if a large percentage of students don’t pass these exams.
Continue reading “OnlineExpert Helps Teachers with Increased Accountability”