Category: Insights
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.
New to the Team
Hello LearnKey blog followers! I’m Beau, and this is my first official blog as the new Marketing and Trade Show Coordinator at LearnKey. I have been in this position since April, and have really enjoyed the work that I am doing. So far I have written press releases, taken lead on new marketing campaigns, booked new trade shows for our sales staff to attend, and performed all kinds of jobs in between to help our Marketing and Support teams.
Now a little about me. I am from the greatest town in the world, Kanab, Utah. I loved growing up in Kanab because it allowed me to be close to all of the activities that I enjoy doing. I love going to Zion National Park to hike or floating the Virgin River on a tube. One of the benefits of growing up in Kanab is that Lake Powell is an hour away. Every summer I look forward to family lake trips. I am currently training to run a marathon sometime this fall.
One weird fact about me is that I like to smell trees, more specifically Ponderosa Pines. I swear to you that if you smell one in the summertime it will smell like vanilla, chocolate, or caramel. The most common smell is caramel and I have yet to smell the elusive chocolate tree.
Last year I graduated from Southern Utah University with a Communications degree emphasizing in Advertising and Public Relations.
I love working at LearnKey and am really excited about some of awesome things coming up. Some of the first major projects I started working on are the upcoming A+ 2012 and Network+ 2012 courses, and we’re all really excited about how those are turning out. Stay tuned to the blog and our Facebook page to stay up-to-date on whats going on!
Are you ready for A+ 2012?
As you may have heard by now, we’re releasing a new A+ Certification course this summer. With that said, I’m just going to leave this video here for you…
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!
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!
Tech jobs are the most popular among veterans
A recent article by PayScale recognizes the difficult task of returning to civilian employment after military service, and in an effort to ease the confusion, asked the question, “Where do military veterans usually work after finishing their service?”
The result? Veterans typically go to jobs where they can apply the skills they learned in the military, which turn out to be mainly tech jobs. PayScale measured the top fifteen most common, well paid, and quickly growing professions veterans choose, and also the top ten job skills veterans report having, and found that while some of the jobs were leadership and medical positions, many of the jobs and skills had one thing in common – they were mostly in information technology or other tech-related fields.
Here is a sample of the data – the top five job skills veterans report having:
- Emergency Room (ER)
- Computer Security
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Electronic Troubleshooting
- Security Risk Management
Read the full article for more information, including the full list of top job skills, and the titles, average salaries, and projected job growth of each of the top fifteen job roles.
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!