If you are interested in working with tools, and would like to gain more experience in the shop-floor environment, you can check out what the Tooling University has to offer. The institute has online courses that will help employees of machine shops and manufacturers improve their skills. The course claims to provide tailored industrial-strength training by assessing the deficiencies in your knowledge of the shop-floor.
For those interested, follow this link.
If you are in the teaching profession, a little internet-savvy, live in Arkansas, and would like to brush up your skills, here’s good news for you. You can enroll in the Arkansas IDEAS (Internet-Delivered Education for Arkansas Schools) program and earn a few of the 60 mandatory hours of training per year. The program, which will take off this fall, is an initiative that will offer online professional development training. The State Department of Education and the Arkansas Educational Television Network have jointly set up the Internet portal that will allow teachers to enhance their skills at almost no cost to the local schools. Arkansas News reports:
Time spent online will be monitored so that it may apply to the 60-hour requirement, whether a teacher logs into the Web portal at school or at a home computer, officials said. Professional development for school administrators also will be offered, Janine Riggs of the Department of Education told members of the House and Senate education committees.
There are some people who have an innate flair for nurturing and providing care, which is why they become professionals in the social service field. To help them meet the demands of their vocations in a more efficient manner, the Institute for Geriatric Social Work (IGSW) is offering a series of online courses in geriatrics. Program participants will trained in the niceties involved in caring for the elderly; they can earn Continuing Education Credits (CEUs), besides meriting an optional Certificate in Aging from the Boston University. The course content and training material are conveyed to those who buy licenses to IGSW’s packages (through credit cards or purchase orders) with an automated delivery and tracking system from the SmartView Learning Management System (LMS). TMC Net reports:
SmartView’s low-cost, all-inclusive system enables agencies to build their own training content, deliver 24×7 classes to targeted audiences, track individual progress, and automate certification tasks. The SmartView team includes one-on-one assistance, especially for those agencies who may be implementing online tools for the very first time.
Education opens doors to success, and online and distance education offer convenient access to learning for those who would otherwise not have the opportunity to widen their horizons. Which is why most countries are streamlining their online offerings; the latest to do are the Caribbean Isles.
In order to boost the number of citizens who enroll in tertiary educational programs, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has tied up with the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) to establish regional e-learning services across the Caribbean. CKLN will provide the latest information and communications technologies needed to interconnect all the universities and colleges within CARICOM, so that they can offer e-learning programs through the regional network, CARIBNET.
Through this endeavor, CARICOM hopes to raise the number enrolled in tertiary courses (degrees, diplomas, certificate courses) from the present 20 percent to 30 percent by the year 2015. CKLN also hopes to enhance the standard of education in the region by facilitating all tertiary institutions in the Caribbean to pool their resources along with those of a few international universities, and in the process be able to develop and offer online learning at relatively reduced costs.
Nortel is doing its part in fostering distance and online learning in China. The communications provider had helped the University of Petroleum connect its campus in Beijing to those in Dongying and Qingdao in the Shandong province last year, thus facilitating easy online access to the University’s advanced learning resources for its 40,000 students.
Now, Nortel is upgrading the converged campus network with a Nortel (NT) solution. The upgraded communications platform will allow real-time communication between the students, staff, and administration of all three campuses, through the use of high-bandwidth Internet services. Distance learning, web-based multimedia collaboration, video conferencing, and VoIP are just a few of the benefits that the Nortel infrastructure has made available.
Eat to live, don’t live to eat – that is the watch phrase these days. It’s not the done thing to be out of shape today, not when all and sundry are becoming increasingly health and fitness conscious. Good health is the result of the right mix of exercise and diet. So it follows that there is a demand for fitness trainers and dieticians.
Not everyone loses weight and gains health by following the same diet. In this situation, it is certainly not a case of “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. Instead, the dietician has to follow the policy, “one man’s meat is another’s poison”, and fashion diets in an individual manner for all his/her patients.
You can earn a dietician’s certificate online, even specializing in designing diets for various categories of people, from the very ill to those who just need to change their eating habits.
If you are fascinated by the law and its finer aspects, but do not have the inclination to become a lawyer, there are various options open to you. Two common choices are to train as paralegals and legal secretaries.
While paralegals or legal assistants are almost lawyers in most aspects – they perform legal research, conduct client interviews, draft legal documents, prepare for mediation, etc. – they are not allowed to give out legal advice. As a paralegal, you can find employment in government organizations, in the legal departments of large corporations, and in law firms. Alternatively, you can work as a freelancer or under a lawyer who owns a solo law practice.
Legal secretaries are responsible for the preparation and process of various legal documents such as summons, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, pretrial agreements and motions. They also do most of a lawyer’s legwork including gathering information for ongoing cases, performing research to ferret out laws and rulings in cases that relate to pending cases, and submitting the details gathered for approval from the attorneys concerned. Besides this, legal secretaries are expected to take care of routine secretarial tasks in a legal firm including taking care of the correspondence and taking minutes of legal meetings.
Follow this link to find a few online courses relating to law.
Not everyone who earns a fake degree online is being scammed. This is the conclusion that I reached in the course of surfing the Internet, when I came across thousands of websites that proudly scream, “Want an MBA? It’s yours for $19.50”, or, “Yours for free – Any of our 20 degrees”. This brought to mind an observation a friend made – as long as there are people who buy stolen goods, there will be crooks around. So as long as people want a degree without the hard work and effort that goes into earning it, the Internet will continue to churn out fake diploma mills.
Why is there such a huge demand for fake degrees anyway? With all the talk of employers not accepting even genuine online degrees as equal substitutes for regular degrees, does it make sense to buy a piece of paper that proclaims that you are a graduate or postgraduate in a particular discipline? In the unlikely case that you do manage to find a job based on the fake degree, will you be able to discharge your duties efficiently?
Arguments may arise that on-the-job proficiency is not related in a great way to theoretical learning. And I fully agree! But if you do not need a degree to excel at work, you should be able to secure a job even without the fake degree. All a fake degree does is to lower your self-esteem. It may look good hanging on the wall in your office, but it is a constant reminder that you have not earned it. So before buying that degree online, think not once, even twice, but long enough to make you decide not to go ahead.
It’s a tough ask from Michigan’s high school students, but the Michigan Virtual University is lending them more than a helping hand. Students from the state of Michigan are required to complete an online course as part of their graduation requisites. To make their path to a high school diploma easier, the Michigan Virtual University has launched the “Career Development in a Global Economy” online course in association with online education software maker Blackboard Inc. The course is being offered totally free of cost to ninth-graders in Michigan. The course, which starts in October, is being funded by $500,000 from Microsoft Corp, and is expected to help the students not only meet their graduation standards, but also help them plan their careers.
The New Mexico State University (NMSU) is taking its college courses into the American Indian pueblos in New Mexico. Digital Pathways, a program that is being undertaken as a joint effort between NMSU, the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), and the New Mexico Tribal Higher Education Commission at a cost of $2 million, will open the portals of the university to the residents of the Cochiti, Acoma, Laguna and Santa Domingo pueblos, and the Eight Northern Pueblos, which includes Tesque, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Santa Clara, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris and Taos, providing them access to its online educational offerings.
The project is being funded with a $500,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, with an additional $1.5 million from NMSU, a sum that will cover expenses for the first three years. Instructors from the largest tribal college in the state, SIPI, will help in handling the courses offered at the distance learning centers. The American Indian community is hopeful that this venture will allow tribal leaders to continue their education while simultaneously discharging their official duties. The community is also in dire need of entrepreneurs to run their various businesses. Digital Pathways will help bridge the gap between the number of skilled and unskilled workers in pueblos, especially in the management and healthcare sectors.
In addition to offering its regular 28 distance education degrees, NMSU is introducing four new programs in tribal law, tribal health care, and hotel, restaurant and tourism management. The university hopes that these courses designed specially to deal with the dearth of skill in the tribal workforce, will encourage residents of the pueblo to sign up.