LearnKey Blog
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.”
New Release: Dreamweaver CS5
LearnKey released our Dreamweaver Cs5 for Mac Course this week (I think I just heard a collective cheer from website designers and wannabe designers all over the world) and in celebration we have a promo for you to checkout.
Debbie Berg is back to teach us all the tips and tricks on how to become masters of Dreamweaver CS5. Debbie even shares some of the tips in the promo! Debbie says this course is perfect for anyone who wants to design a website because you will learn how to layout and design webpages, learn how to use CSS, and learn how to upload and publish websites. For more information, visit our Dreamweaver CS5 product page
Social Networking in Schools
This morning I read an article titled New research just released on “School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies, and Realities in 2010”. The article is about research results regarding what principals thought about social networking in their school communities. To gather information researchers used a survey of school principals and an online discussion group of principals who were already using social networking. The results were surprising to me, most principals found value in using social networking in education listing the following as specific examples of benefits.
What is the value of social networking in education?
- Improve school wide communications
- A channel to communicate to an extended network of educators
- Students view learning as more collaborative
- Students see it as a connection to real-life learning
- Improves students motivation, engagement, and /or active involvement
With all of these benefits, what’s the hold up?
Schools are noted as some of the last hold outs to implement the use of social networking. Among the discussion group none of the principals had school or district policies in place for social networking that were sufficient. There are also concerns about safety, privacy, confidentiality, and a lack of information about how to make sure these sites are used appropriately at school.
I know this topic is controversial and people have their opinions on this subject, so let’s hear them. Let us know what you think about social networing in schools!