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.
May Employee of the Month – Recognized for his “break/fix” skills!
At LearnKey, we have employees who take great pride in creating video training courses in our Salt Lake City, UT studios, those who are great at selling, supporting, marketing and promoting our courseware in our St. George offices, and those team members who finish our courses through post production process in Cedar City, UT.
Then there are team members like our May employee of the month Val Deuel, a super quality control agent who does everything he can to “break” our courses prior to them being released and loaded into our Learning Management System (onlineexpert.com). Our quality control team is a true asset to the LearnKey family, and we our proud of the great work they do.
His leadership team had these great things to say about Val:
“He embodies our core values of Trust, Value, and Ease, and maintains a positive attitude in everything he does. Trust – Val can always be trusted to complete whatever work he is given promptly and efficiently. He is not afraid to ask for help or further instructions when needed and he never complains, regardless the task. He shows trust in his supervisors by being willing to complete whatever task he is assigned. Val embodies the core value of Value in his willingness and ability to complete tasks. Through Val’s hard work he made it very Easy for us to select him as our May employe of the month.
Continue reading “May Employee of the Month – Recognized for his “break/fix” skills!”
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!
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.
Visit veterans.learnkey.com for more information on our Veteran Services program.
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!
April Employee of the month = True Champion!
When it comes to being a true champion within our Better Learning Systems (BLS) companies, look no further than Kim Gillcoatt, who holds the title of Client Services Champion for a reason. She offers outstanding support to all teams in our BLS company, exemplifying Ease, Value and Trust every day. Kim provides Ease in coordination of projects internally and externally for our customers; and Ease in terms of working together across our 3 companies. She has everyone’s back – which is why it was a landslide in voting her employee of the month for April!
Kim has been an employee of Predix going on three years. Here’s what Lori C. had to say:
“Her Value is seen 24X7 doing whatever it takes to accomplish a task that has been given to her. In the past 2 years since she has been in this role, she has never missed a committed deadline – which is truly remarkable. Kim provides Value daily in supporting the executive team in numerous projects for all of BLS in research projects, coordination for internal employees and external clients, sales efforts, marketing, recruiting efforts, and client servicing”.
Continue reading “April Employee of the month = True Champion!”
Happy 25th Anniversary, LearnKey!
This year, LearnKey turns 25 years old! We’ve come a long way in 25 years, going from a small one-man office producing VHS video, to an amazing group of people spanning multiple offices which are dedicated to providing the best eLearning products we can produce.
LearnKey now has three different offices in Utah, with distributors all over the world providing our courseware to areas we never even thought possible when the company was founded. And now with our Better Learning Systems sister companies LearnCast and Predix, our reach is even larger.
Here are a few facts about when LearnKey first started out:
- LearnKey came to be in 1987. Official Incorporation date: March 20, 1987
- The first video produced was WordPertfect 4.2 for DOS
- Our first product was edited and packaged in April/May 1987, and the first VHS arrived October 28, 1987.
Thanks for being there with us over the years, and may there be many more in the future!
March Employee of the Month – Congrats to a LearnKey Client Services Rock Star!
At LearnKey and Better Learning Systems, all of our employees treat each other as customers. That goes one level up when your dealing with Gina Black from our client services team. If you have a process that needs improving, give it to Gina. Need assistance with customer support request, or client files? After you hit “send” on your email, you will get a response back so quickly, you will think the email bounced – that’s just how fast and efficient Gina is all the time at getting things done for our LearnKey clients!
I am very proud to announce that Gina Black has been chosen our March employee of the month. Here’s what Kim Johnson, her manager had to say:
“Gina Black has been with LearnKey for over 4 years and has added an enormous amount of value to the Client Services team. She first started in our Marketing department assisting them with their daily tasks. About two years ago Gina worked part time as my assistant and as part of the Client Services team. She has an amazing ability to find the most efficient way to finish the task she has been given, which is why she truly is a rock star and our March employee of the month.”
Continue reading “March Employee of the Month – Congrats to a LearnKey Client Services Rock Star!”