Happy New Year - all the best in 2010!

We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season with friends and family and are able to spend some time relaxing and recharging over the break. All of us at Inet-Toolbox would like to take this opportunity to say "Thank you" for your business and we look forward to supporting your learning into the new year.

2010 will bring changes for all of us - as every new year does - and planning always makes it easier to manage those changes. The holiday season is a good time to settle into a comfortable chair for a moment and do some self-evaluation: what are your successes, what else do you want to achieve, how will you accomplish it? Along with all your very personal goal setting, we hope your New Year's resolutions include fine-tuning your technology skills and that when you are ready to move forward with those skills, you'll contact us.

We wish you all the best for 2010 - see you in the New Year!
Cynthia

2009 - the Year in Review

Redman, a fabulous IT consultant that specializes in VoIP - sounds intimidating but he is a great instructor who is patient and gentle with our students, and especially loves working with those who are very new at using computers. Another new instructor is Paul Jeffrey, who works in the advertising and design industry every day. He brings a wealth of information and lots of practical experience to our students through courses such as Photoshop and InDesign. Leanne Gosse, a school librarian for many years, has brought a wonderful library session into our collection supporting reluctant readers. Some of our instructors have moved on and are growing their consulting businesses this year and we wish them all the best in the future. I've always been proud of the extensive knowledge and skills our instructors bring to Inet-Toolbox and which they so willingly share with our students - many thanks to all of them.

A few new courses were added this year, and we saw the move from Microsoft Office 2003 to 2007 as well as the upgrade to Adobe CS4 products, most specifically in the Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver classes. We've also expanded out into some customized sessions for teachers that focus on curriculum mapping connections for realizing specific Learning Outcomes - a great support for educators in the 21st century.

Most recently, through an agreement with Serebra Learning, we've had the thrill of adding over 3000 online courses to our eLearning collection covering everything from basic computer skills through to certification courses in Microsoft, CompTia, Dell, Sun, Apple and more. We are now able to negotiate incredible rates on multi-course bundles or multi-learner packages for these courses. This is a great support to those who are getting their IT certifications and coming into our new testing centre to write their exams.

On that note, the testing centre is running smoothly and we're excited to be the only Prometric IT Testing location in Calgary that is open on Saturdays. Over the year it has gained momentum and our new test proctor, Dennis, certainly has his hands full on the weekends!

In the coming year, you'll see us focusing more on providing group learning days and customized sessions. Our goal is to continue bringing you the learning you need, not only when you need it, but in the way that suits you best.

I personally want to thank all of you - students, clients, instructors, staff - for helping us grow and improve in 2009. I look forward to seeing Inet-Toolbox continue supporting your learning needs into 2010.

Cheers!

Cynthia

More calendars, more classes!

We're working on getting the calendars posted right up to the end of June so over the next week you will see them start to appear on the training schedules page. While we will continue adding new sessions over time, having the main calendars in place will help those of you who need to do your PD planning in advance. Since we will continue to add sessions, remember that you can call us to make a request if you don't see the class you want - just like always!

Prometric Testing Centre running smoothly

Calgary's newest Prometric Testing Centre is up and running smoothly at Inet-Toolbox. We are becoming proficient with checking test candidates in and out, and we've now got the bugs out of the technology side of things. If you or someone you know is ready for IT certification testing, we've got an excellent location, comfortable testing room, and free parking! Test registration is handled online through the Prometric Web site by selecting the "Test Takers" menu option.

Online Registration System Upgrade

We're almost through the upgrade of the Online Registration System! Our registration provider has asked us to test it, request changes, and they'll get us back online this week. We're looking forward to a few nice features that have been added to make the registration process easier for you! In the meantime, if you'd like to check on any courses or register for a session, please don't hesitate to call the office at 403-703-4303 and we'll take care of you right away.
Cynthia

Gearing up for fall computer training

September is shaping up to be a busy month with registrations already on an upswing! We've enjoyed a great summer and I hope you had the chance to get some rest and relaxation in with your family during the warm weather. Now we're all heading back to work and back to school, so if you have any custom booking or group training requests, please get those into us as soon as possible to ensure we can schedule the dates you want.
Cynthia

Summer 2008 news

The summer has simply flown by here and I see that I haven't shared anything with you the whole time, so here are some notes to catch you up.


Renovations
The building renovations are complete now and we're very pleased with our new look. In our offices, we made a number of major changes this summer and did some painting to freshen up the lab and meeting room. The computer lab now has it's own air conditioning so we can now keep it comfortable regardless of how many people are in a class - we're thrilled with that!


New courses
We have finalized all the materials and are now ready to go with all of the Office 2007 full courses. All of last year we offered the transition series (short Office 2007 courses for those who just need a kick start into the new interface and features in the new version). Starting in September, we will be offering the full day courses in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook 2007 as well as the transition series. We will also still be offering Office 2003 as many organizations are still working in that version with no plans to go to 2007 in the immediate future.


IT Testing
We are now an official Prometric Testing centre! Over the summer we have been setting up the new testing room and working with Prometric to put the systems in place for this new service. The testing centre is now open and we are booking industry exams for Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Apple, Oracle, and many other IT certification exams.


eCampus expansion
To further support those working towards IT certifications, we are fine tuning our online course offerings and adding a huge list of web-based courses to our eCampus collection. We expect to have the complete list available by the end of September.


New Registration System
Our registration system provider, uRegister.ca, has informed us that they will be migrating to a new version this fall. We expect to see the new version rolling out for Inet-Toolbox during September, so don't be surprised if you go to register for a course and the system has changed! We are working with uRegister.ca to make the migration as seamless as possible but it looks like we will not be able to port the personal data from the old system to the new one, so you may need to create a new account when the new registration system kicks in.


As always, if you have any questions about any of the services or offerings of Inet-Toolbox please don't hesitate to contact our office at 403.703.4303


There's more to come, but enjoy the rest of the summer and we hope to see you this fall.
Cynthia