LearnKey Blog
Word 2010 Certification Journey Continues
So I am still working toward my certification and have found time to finish up with session 1 of our Word 2010 training. I took the post test for session 1, and apparently I need a review. I didn’t do so well on it, but the great thing is that you get to print out a study guide that shows you the questions that you missed, and you can see what sections the questions are in so that you can go back to those spots and review the material.
After I picked my ego up off the floor, I started watching the training for session 2. The topics covered in this session are: Working with Templates, Formatting Text, Formatting Paragraphs, Organizing Data, Bulleted and Numbered Lists, Manipulating Page Layout, Manipulating Page Backgrounds, and Headers and Footers. I found a lot of information in this session very helpful, but one feature stuck out to me and alone is worth upgrading to Office 2010; it is called Autotext and it lets you save text you use regularly under the Quickparts section, then when you need it you can just insert it into any Word document. This is a great time saver, and when I am writing press releases this would be so nice to have for the About Us section.
Again, this session provides you with material that will be on the certification exam, but also gives you some great shortcuts that you can start using right away.
A Painless, Paperless Conversion.
I found myself frustrated one day at the amount of paper, notebooks and files that I had lying around. As a hopeless workaholic, I felt the need to constantly carry many of these documents and files with me for the slight chance I may be able to work on them at home or wherever I ended up that night or weekend. That often left me with a fully packed backpack which was very heavy, or overflowing binders of notes, flyers and documents. People often commented about my overflowing binder. I often commented at what a pain it was to carry around, and how carrying it could replace a gym workout each day. I always reveled in the days I could clean out those files and consolidate my paper documents. It was great once in a while to look organized. That never lasted long with paper documents piling up daily.
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.
With Our Talents Combined…
LearnKey has talent; TONS of talent. As one of the senior designers for the Cedar City branch office, I get to work with seven other designers directly (each of which has his/her own brand of super power so to speak). If we aren’t collaborating, then we aren’t working. Until recently, the Cedar City branch really hasn’t had too much interaction with our corporate office in terms of working with the awesome group of designers in the marketing department. Our new CEO, Jeff Coruccini, approached me about a two months ago and asked that I work with Trevor Hinton to design and a develop a website for the company.
Web design is my forte and I bleed CSS, so I jumped at this opportunity. Jeff asked that the site be built on a WordPress back end. This was going to be a learning experience for me as I have never designed for WordPress. Luckily for me, Trevor is a WordPress guru. Once I completed the design and had coded the site in HTML and CSS, I packed up my trusty iMac and headed down to the St. George office.
Working with Trevor was a great experience. We were able to bounce ideas off each other, learn new tricks and techniques, and build a relationship between the two different design teams. Now that we know that there is an even deeper pool of talent in the LearnKey family, we are now enabled to take our products to the next level. LearnKey is not just satisfied in training clients, but they want their employees to learn and grow as well. I’m looking forward to working more closely with our marketing team, because I know together we can make something amazing!
Keys to our Success: Great Employees Demonstrating Ease, Value and Trust
As we continue grow, gain success, and reach new heights as a company, it is important that we recognize our most valuable assets: the employees who help us achieve greatness by demonstrating what we stand for through our core values of Ease, Value, and Trust.
Which is why we want to provide a work environment that fosters ease for our employees to get their job done, as well as feel valued for the work they do, and in return the bond of trust is a never ending building process between all of us and our customers. These core values live with us first, becoming the fabric of our company and ultimately are passed along to our valued customers.
Over the past two months I have been extremely proud of the people we have working at LearnKey, and it has been a great experience, which is why my first blog was all about the talent on our team. The key ingredient to any successful company starts with the people. Now its time to start sharing with everyone the successes of our employees each month.
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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!
Cisco Certified Network Professional
Within the Internet technology industry, certification is becoming more and more of a necessity. It has become the validation method for many employers that verifies you have the knowledge and skills they require to get the job done. Hence attaining certification in addition to education and experience is paramount if your goal is a career.
Consider also that when it comes to networking Cisco is the dominant force in the industry. If you work in almost any IT capacity, you will come across Cisco equipment, and you will be required to configure and maintain said equipment. To this end, Cisco has created a series of certifications that once attained will help you communicate to employers and colleges your level of knowledge and skill.
Lizard on the Loose…
Wow! This is so cool. Now I see why Colin is always staring at his computer… Hmmmm, what should I write?
This is Leo. I demand more luv and food. Especially food. Also could you get me a phone? Mini if you can.
– Leo
P.S. I get Colin’s computer if he’s not back by tomorrow.
LearnCast Technologies
Hello, I’m back and for those of you who don’t know me I am a web developer here at LearnKey. Just recently I had an amazing opportunity to meet with the CEO of LearnCast, David Clemons, from whom I received an in depth introduction to their mobile learning platform in hopes to see how we could utilize their technology, and what they had to offer LearnKey.
What LearnCast provides is a platform where an educator or business manager can easily take video, audio or any kind of learning material and create their own course with quizzes, exams, and polls and then push them out to participants via SMS messaging or email.
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My Certification Journey
Yeah! I finally dove into my Word 2010 training and I am so excited because I have already learned so many great new tricks in just the first session. If you are like me sure you can function in Word, but you are not necessarily the most efficient in the program, well that is the great thing about our training because not only is it preparing you for a certification exam you also learn shortcuts and new tricks that will help you be more efficient. There is a new File tab in this version that replaces the Office Button, which is probably the biggest layout change.
I have some tricks to share with you for Word 2010:
Continue reading “My Certification Journey”