LearnKey Blog
Access 2010 Training Shoot
The week of September 27 – October 1 saw the LearnKey crew shooting the Microsoft Office Access training with Jason Manibog from Boise Idaho. He is currently a training manager for LeapFox Learning, but has been in the training industry for over a decade. He specializes in SharePoint, Access, and Excel training.
It didn’t take him long to adjust from the real-time teaching environment of the classroom to the more disjunct method of recording. He quickly picked up on the process and within the first day was sailing along smoothly. He posted some impressive film time for a newbie!
He also managed to keep his sense of humor in the sometimes stressful environment, making jokes and laughing through the process. His preparation before shoot and his knowledge of the subject matter made the filming a very straightforward effort. He is definitely an author we hope to bring back for future projects.
Student Certification Success with LearnKey in eSchool News
Not long after receiving two Eddie Awards for our training courses, LearnKey’s role in helping 26 students from University Senior High School achieve their Microsoft Office Specialist credential was featured in an article on eSchool News.
“Giving our students the opportunity to meet certification requirements provides them with an extra boost in their career pathway,” says USHS Principal Eric Davidson. “It also gives these students an opportunity to apply their skills in unique and innovative ways that set them apart from their peers. We’re very excited about our students’ accomplishment and look forward to continuing this certification program next year.”
Head on over to the eSchool News website to read the full article about how our Microsoft Office interactive learning library helped set these students apart from their peers on resumes and college applications.
Training for Principals
The first initiative for the George W. Bush Institute was announced recently by former First Lady Laura Bush. The initiative will be geared toward improved performance of school principals. Why did they choose this as their focus when there are so many education issues that need to be addressed? Simply put school principals have a lot of influence on the school environment and teacher success, which in turn influences the students.
The initiative will aim to provide 50,000 principals and future principals with leadership training over the next ten years. Generally principals come from an educational background and not from a leadership background. This training is aimed at providing them with the leadership skills needed to run a school. The institute will be working with the help of other organizations to provide the training to principals and future principals.
What do you think about the first initiative? Do you think this top down approach will be successful? If you don’t where do you think they should have invested the resources first? Did they start high enough with principals or should they have considered starting at a district level? State level? National level?
Distance Education
One of our Sales Representatives recently returned from the New Mexico Technology in Education (NM TIE) conference and one of the biggest things he noticed was the attendees were predominately from Higher Education, mostly community colleges and they all had one thing on their minds – distance education.
One reason distance education continues to be a growing trend in higher education is because it is convenient and you can fit it into your schedule. This has become increasingly important as costs of higher education continue to rise in a down economy, most students are working and going to school. Distance education allows students the opportunity to do both.
Doing More With Less
Computerworld’s 2011 Forecast survey of IT executives found that most viewed spending restraints as the biggest challenge for the upcoming year and few expect to reverse the cuts made over the last two years.
So what does that mean for the future of today’s businesses? This kind of situation can be handled many ways. Companies can start charging more for their products and services, they can cut the more costly products and services they have to offer – but in the end all that does is hurt the end user. The way to produce quality results is to do more with less – re-evaluate the way you do business instead of just looking at the cost of the end result. Are there ways to implement technology you are currently using to automate processes and cut down on your workload? Are there new technologies that are more efficient at doing what you need to do?
LearnKey Takes Home Two EDDIE Awards!
We are very excited to announce that LearnKey was the winner of not one, but two EDDIE Awards!
Both awards were in the Post-Secondary category, one for our Excel 2010 training for the Online Spreadsheet Course category. The other award was for our Photoshop CS4 training for the Online Integrated Design Course category.
The 15th Annual Education Software Review (EDDIE) awards are for programs and websites that supplement the classroom curriculum and increase teacher productivity with inventive ideas. They pick the winners using criteria like, content, potential use, and technical merit. Publishers from around the world submitted titles for consideration.
For more information about LearnKey’s award winning products visit our website at www.learnkey.com.
LearnKey: A TCPN Vendor
For people who work for school districts or government-run departments, the process of purchasing items and services you need can sometimes be a bit of a hassle. There are all kinds of requirements and policies put in place, not to mention you now have to try and place your trust into a single company out of the many that are bidding for your attention. To those unskilled in Governmentese, this could all be very overwhelming, often complicating things way beyond the normal amount of complication. You may not have known this, but LearnKey is now a TCPN (The Cooperative Purchasing Network) vendor, making the purchasing process that much simpler!
Flash CS5 for Mac Released
Today we released our Flash CS5 for Mac training course. Chad Troftgruben guides you through the latest features and tools to prepare you for the ACA certification exam and gets you on your way to becoming a Flash expert. The topics covered can be broken down into three major subject areas; design, animation, and action script.
This course is geared toward anyone who wants to pursue certification from beginners to CS4 users looking to learn about the latest features. For more information check out the promo video with Chad or check out the product page.
LearnKey’s Fast Track to CompTIA “Certify for Life”
If you are looking to start a career in IT and have decided on CompTIA certifications you should be aware of the changes that will be implemented in the coming year. Starting January 1, 2011 when you earn a CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, or CompTIA Security+ certification you will have to renew your certification every three years. In the past, earning one of those three certifications guaranteed you “Certified” status for the rest of your life. This seems good for the people earning certifications, but the drawback is that you aren’t required to keep up on current technology – earning your A+ Certification ten years ago meant learning a whole different set of skills than what you would need today. With the new policy, the certified must keep their certifications current by either retaking the current exam or earning Continuing Education Units (CEUs). CEUs are earned a number of ways – attending industry events, teaching/lecturing on relevant industry topics, taking *ahem* computer based training courses…
Continue reading “LearnKey’s Fast Track to CompTIA “Certify for Life””
Internet Explorer 9: A Step Forward
If you keep up with tech blogs at all, you probably have heard about Microsoft’s release of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Chances are you probably heard about it through some kind of article talking about its support for modern web standards like HTML5 and CSS3. The day of the Beta release, our Twitter feed was filled with posts about how awesome HTML5 is, and how IE9 supports it. I think this article on Slate put it best:
“Wednesday’s demo was so heavy on the new browser’s graphical capabilities that you’d think Microsoft invented HTML5, instead of just now getting around to making a browser that supports it.”