LearnKey Blog
I ♥ NY
My trip started out with a long day of travel from Las Vegas to New York City. I love New York City and I am sure I will never in my lifetime see everything it has to offer. I am staying in an amazing hotel right next the World Trade Center. You must see this building in person to really appreciate it, my picture is great but does not do it justice. It is so humbling to see in person and to think of all the people we lost on 9/11.
I am here attending a CTE (Career & Technical Education) conference at the United Federation of Teachers. I have learned so much about New York schools and how they looking to helping students better prepare for college and for the workforce.
Tomorrow we are touring the schools who have successfully implemented student certification programs.
Lights, Camera, and Action!
Have you ever wondered what it takes to produce and film a LearnKey course? If you have, today is your lucky day! We are going to share what our authors do while filming inside our production studio in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are going to be highlighting the work of Michael Meskers, the LearnKey expert behind our new Excel 2013 course, and freshly filmed Excel Formulas and Outlook 2013 courses.
Check out our course release schedule to find out when these courses will be available.
So what happens between deciding to produce a course and filming it? Well, it all starts with a good game plan, or officially called the course outline. Michael is a long-time LearnKey author and has filmed many courses with us, the most recent being Outlook 2013. Before arriving at the studio, Michael spent several months planning and preparing the look and feel of the course. One of his most important tasks during this time is to make sure all objectives are covered, allowing our students to prepare and pass industry certifications.
The next step is flying into the studio and getting to work early in the morning. When Michael walks into the studio first thing in the morning, there is a computer set up with the software he will need for the shoot that day. The studio crew then places a wireless microphone on him, which is followed by an audio check. Michael likes to warm up his voice with funny jokes and an occasional song, such as selections from Fiddler on the Roof. Once the audio check is good, we move on and make sure we are capturing the computer screen correctly.
Now it’s time for the fun part – we start filming. Michael is in the studio presenting the course information in front of our green screen with our camera man filming him. Back in the control room, the crew has the outline and the course objectives in hand. As he teaches, the crew is listening and checking off where each objective is covered. The crew is also watching sound levels and checking out the computer capture. If something goes wrong, we have to go back and do it all over again.
Once Michael has completed teaching the course, we go back and film the headshots. We place Michael in front of a green screen and then key out the headshots later with a cool background. Filming the headshots are usually the most entertaining time of the shoot. We love it when the author accidentally makes a mistake, which can give us the giggles. Michael is really good in front of the camera and rarely makes a mistake, but when he does make the occasional flub, it’s always funny, which is why shooting the headshots is the crew’s and author’s favorite part!
Now you know what goes into filming our courses. As you can tell, it’s a lot of work and a lot of fun.
Quick Learner, Efficient and most importantly Team Player!
Those are the words that describe our Better Learning Systems newest employee of the month: Mrs. Katie Kuether, someone who not only demonstrates our core values to her team, but other teams within the company. Katie has been working in our client services team for almost a year now and plays a key role in making sure all the school districts and student files are loaded and ready come the beginning of school season.
Katie has demonstrated her ability to be a quick learner and very efficient, as this is truly a role in which you “learn as you grow” into the position. As school starts, the most important part of the process is on boarding students and teachers. She fields all kinds of calls ranging from how to sign in, run a report, or save a file to our Learning Management System (OnlineExpert.com) and even troubleshooting.
During our monthly nomination, here’s what Katie’s leader had to say about her:
“Katie has been with the company almost a year and it has been my pleasure to have her as a part of the team. She has been so easy to work with, and has taken on a role that encompasses both a part of accounting and client services. She has excellent customer services skills and asks all of the right questions when given a task. Most of the work with Client Services cannot be trained and added to a manual and you learn on the job and as you go, Katie has done an excellent job of jumping in and going with whatever she has been given”.
Now for the best part – please take a moment to learn more about Katie and learn things like a peanut butter and jelly (add the Cheetos) sandwich…
1. How many siblings do you have?
I have 4 siblings, 2 brothers and 2 sisters
2. What is your favorite movie?
Steel Magnolias
3. What is your favorite band?
Of all time? Nsync
4. What is your favorite vacation spot?
California/Disneyland
5. What was your high school’s mascot?
Pirates
6. What is the weirdest combination of foods you have eaten?
Peanut butter and jelly with Cheetos.
7. What is/was the name of your favorite pet?
Bubbles
8. What was your first car?
I don’t even know what kind of car it was; I just know it was a very yellow station wagon.
9. If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?
New York City
10. Would you rather sky dive, bungee jump, zip line, or parasail?
I would pick parasail, that seems the safest. J
11. What is the funniest saying you have heard working here?
My favorite is Kim’s phrases “OH BUDDY” and “Yeah weird”.
12. If you could eat dinner with anyone from the past, present, or future, who would it be and why?
My mom and grandma passed away when I was 21, so if I could I would love to have dinner with them again.
Congratulations to Katie for this accomplishment and we are so fortunate to have you as part of our team.
Warm Regards and ’til next month!
– Jeff Coruccini
Justin time LearnKey training
It was a great experience watching Justin Walker one of our LearnKey Courseware experts talk to a group of students from Fountain Hills High School in Fountain Hills Arizona.
These students are wanting to learn Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and earn their certifications. We had a simple message for them – Certifications can and will have a positive impact on your career and college ready preparation. Industry experts now state 89% of IT hiring managers use “Certifications” as a filter for prioritizing resumes. Once in, career professionals who keep their certification track up-to-date earn on average 26% more than their peers.
It was a fun day speaking with four classes as they were good listeners and truly wanted to learn. Another benefit we shared with them is they get a chance to learn “distance learning” by using LearnKey courseware. Also, lets not forget that the teachers we met were fantastic. Thanks again to Bonnie Perkins, Jennifer Ray (CTE Leader) and Karla Primosch for allowing us to come in and speak.
Its great to see BLS/LearnKey team members out talking with students and teachers getting their input so we can make better courses! Thanks again for the great work Justin!
Team Player & “Can Do” approach is the way to do your job!
I tell people all the time – if you want to add value to your organization and stand out, learn these three things: 1) Become a stellar team player, 2) Be resourceful, and 3) Possess a “can do” approach to problem solving. You do those three things well and you will stand out in comparison to the competition.
One of our very own employees, who just so happens to be our newest employee of the month Brad Washburn, has been recognized for demonstrating similar attributes for his work over the past year. Here is some of the nomination and kind words one of our leaders shared about Brad and how he demonstrates our core values (Ease, Value and Trust):
“Brad has spent his time creating LearnCast courses for our mobile library. He created these courses independently and with Ease. In that short time, he produced 109 courses with a wide variety of topics appealing to all types of learners. Next, he worked on developing and configuring the wide screen settings for our LearnKey courses. He was tasked to recapture 8 hefty courses in just a few months and He did it! Now our clients will be able to watch our Adobe Suite in widescreen this Fall. He has won my Trust as being a go to person to get the job done and on time. His work has brought Value to our company. Brad is a pleasure to work with and I am happy to have him on my team!”
Brad’s actions and accomplishment speak to his contributions and we are very appreciative to have him on our team. As we do every Better Learning Systems (BLS) employee of the month, we share with you some fun facts about Brad so you can get to know him better:
Continue reading “Team Player & “Can Do” approach is the way to do your job!”
Serving Those Who Serve
I have only been at LearnKey for a short time, but I am very excited to have the opportunity to be working with veterans on a daily basis as part of the LearnKey Veteran Services team. Being a veteran myself and attending school full-time, I know how important it is to get an education and further your career.
When I first started at LearnKey my responsibility was to contact veterans who use our courseware and check on the status of their education twice a month. It was very rewarding for me to see the awesome changes in these veterans’ lives because of what they were learning from our courses. The more time I spent talking to them, the more excited I was about sharing the education resources we provide to my fellow battle buddies and all veterans. Now I have the opportunity to travel throughout the country seeking out veterans and spending time with them individually, introducing them to our exceptional educational programs.
Bringing Learnkey to the Philippines
Over the last couple of months, we have been working with educators in the Philippines setting up a remote LearnKey enterprise. In a nutshell, the objective of this project was to create a standalone solution for our OnlineExpert.com website. This means a server was loaded with our code base, media content, and database information so that students could connect directly to the server to access our courseware instead of connecting over the Internet.
This project was successful due to the work of many people. I wanted to share my experience of working with this enormous project.
This project was a great experience for our IT department. Due to the 14-hour time difference, we all experienced many late night-work sessions. We had the challenge of helping obtain servers by working through vendors in the Philippines and also assisting our contact at LGSMI. Once we had the servers ordered, I helped our developers get the code ready to load onto the servers. The primary challenge was to take a website and the associated database and make it run off a local intranet environment from the two servers we secured in the Philippines. This also meant we had to load all of the media for our courses onto these two servers. Another challenge we faced was unreliable connections over the Internet, which prevented us from transferring the data over the Internet. We overcame this by loading everything that would be needed for the servers onto an external hard drive and sending it to Manila, Philippines. Our CEO, Jeff Coruccini, flew the external hard drive to Manila and transferred all of the data to our new servers.
So far, I have outlined a lot of the challenges we faced with this project. I don’t want you to get the idea that this project was only difficult. We have learned a great deal about our own website and database and how they talk to each other. Our developers, who were not involved in the original site design, were particularly helpful with working through the code changes and server/network setup. They assisted us in configuring the server to properly load balance the traffic so we could ensure the absolute best experience for the students who would be using this system. They also got into the switch and modem configuration so that we could allow students to log in via a wireless network and access our courses.
The most valuable lesson through all of this has been that we can take on a challenge of this magnitude and still provide our customers with the best learning experience out there. The dedication and skills of our production and software development teams were put to the test, and they passed with flying colors. We are excited for what the future holds in the fast-paced field of eLearning, and I look forward to the ways that LearnKey will be championing the innovations of that field.
IT Leader: Problem solver & Orchestrator
In the world of technology, especially education through video based training, there are a lot of “moving parts”. We are talking hardware, software, desktop support, third party support vendors, streaming – you name it, we have to host and support it. That is why you need great individuals who can solve problems and orchestrate all technology activities to keep us in business.
That is why I am pleased to announce our IT Leader and Orchestrator Ron Larsen is this months LearnKey/Better Learning Systems employee of the month. His nomination comes after some major milestones: centralizing our support and hosting services, improving OnlineExpert’s “up time” from 98% to 99.9%, and reducing some key expenses along the way.
Ron demonstrates our core values: Ease, Value and Trust in so many ways. Here is what one of his peers had to say:
“As LearnKey’s IT manager, he and his team ensure that LearnKey’s Sales, Client Services, Shipping, Accounting, HR, Marketing, and Production Departments are all able to do their jobs. Quite simply, without Ron and his efforts, LearnKey wouldn’t be able to produce it’s content; Ron makes it easy for the employees of LearnKey and provides value in making things happen that many of us never see, and in some cases are not even aware of. He works behind the scenes a lot of the time moving or upgrading servers to provide clients with a better experience and improving efficiency of the LK team. He builds Trust by simply doing what he says he will do.
Learning Photoshop CS6
Last month I was presented with what seemed like a daunting task. I was asked to learn Photoshop CS6 and take the ACA certification exam, so I could assist with Photoshop CS6 training for teachers in New York. I had never used Photoshop before so I was really nervous about having to learn this new skill and then assist in training others in this program. I am not ACA certified yet, but I have learned first hand how valuable our training is when learning Photoshop CS6.
As I prepare to take the ACA exam to become Photoshop CS6 Certified I want to share six things I have learned that will help anyone who is using LearnKey training to prepare for certification exams.
Scheduled site maintenance
We are undergoing some scheduled site maintenance this weekend, and as a result, many of our sites will not be functioning between Friday 5/31 5pm Pacific time and Saturday 6/1 10pm Pacific time.
The following sites will be affected:
LearnKey
LearnKey Blog
LearnKey Veteran Services
LearnKey Product Registration
Better Learning Systems
Know Your Talents
All sites should be functioning again on Saturday 6/1 at 10pm Pacific time.