LearnKey Blog

Tag: A+

New Products for a New School Year

Remember how I promised all you teachers out there that LearnKey would be releasing some really awesome new tools to use in your classrooms? Well consider that promised fulfilled, because we will be releasing brand new course projects and the A+ workbook, both made specifically for you and ready to use for the 2012/2013 school year!

As many of you know, our new A+ 2012 course was released at the end of July. We were excited to introduce Tom Carpenter as the new face and author of A+ 2012. Tom is a great fit for teaching this course because he has hands on experience teaching A+ to high school students, preparing them for the A+ exam. Tom also has 15 years of training, 20 years of work experience in IT and has also written 14 IT related books through McGraw-Hill and Sybex.

Included with the course is a new course workbook, and one exciting thing about the A+ workbook is that it was written by Tom Carpenter specifically for LearnKey. Teachers should be excited about this because Tom personally made sure that the workbook is mapped to our A+ course. Included in the workbook are application projects that provide learning opportunities that will prepare students for the A+ exam. The workbook also includes some bonus information not included in the course that expands upon concepts that are presented, and lesson plans which can be used as a guide to teach the course. We are really happy with the work that Tom put into the workbook and know that it will be a great asset to the A+ teaching experience.

Our next big end of summer release is the teacher projects, made by teachers for teachers. Much of the feedback that we were getting from teachers was that they wished we had more projects that were more hands on and really reinforce skills that their students need to receive their certification. We heard this feedback and are happy to say that since June we have had teachers who use our courses in their classrooms create projects that will be available to all LK teachers to use.

The team here at LearnKey has been working really hard all summer to make sure that these awesome new features would be ready to go by the time you go back to school. I am really proud of all of the work that has gone into these projects and I am positive that they will be a great benefit to your classroom.

A+ Certification 2012 released

We’ve been teasing it for a while, but our A+ Certification 2012 course is now available! A+ is one of our most popular courses, so of course Tom Carpenter and our production teams went out of their way to make this version both entertaining and educational.

Course Clips:

Looking inside a computer
The Motherboard
Mini-ATX and Micro-ATX
Installing a CPU

An A+ Certification is one of the core requirements for many tech support and computer service jobs, and is the gateway to more specific career paths. If you’ve been looking to get started in IT, or if you’re expanding your tech knowledge, this course is for you.

Visit the Product page for more course information

Tom Carpenter discusses A+ 2012

Our next CompTIA A+ Certification course is coming closer and closer to completion. As you may know, this version is hosted by Tom Carpenter, a course author who has worked with us quite a bit in the past. This is Tom’s first A+ course with LearnKey, and some of you may not have had the chance to see any of his other work before, so we wanted to make sure your questions and concerns were answered.

Our own Paula Pixley contacted Tom for an interview, in which he discusses his years of IT experience, his past work with LearnKey, and what kind of approach he takes to teaching the A+ objectives.

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.

Continue reading “Sweet “Temporary” Home Alabama…”

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!

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””