Get Schooled at New Horizons

Below is an except from an email that was sent to one of our Education Consultants.  This individual attended training at New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Dayton, OH. He qualified to receive funding to attend training through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA).    This is the kind of thing that makes me love my job! To know that we are changing the lives of our students every day means so much.

Dear Amy,

I just wanted to write to let you know about my great experience with New Horizons. As you may know, I am enrolled in your Microsoft Certified Application Developer sequence. Before I came to New Horizons, I worked in a factory and had little background with computers. The hands-on format of the training was invaluable, and I love the flexibility.

I just finished the classroom training, and all I have left is to take the last Microsoft exam. I haven’t taken the test yet because I was recently hired at LexisNexis as a Technical Support Representative. My experience at New Horizons helped me get this position. With hope, I will take the last certification test soon, and I know it will help me in my career.

Thanks,

Jody

A recent report found the information technology workforce reached its highest level in the second quarter of this year since the beginning of 2009, according to GovInfoSecurity.com.

The Information Security Media Group recently analyzed data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found employers added 55,000 information technology jobs in the second quarter and brought the country’s total IT employment to a nearly 3.8 million annualized. The information technology workforce, which includes both employed and unemployed specialists with IT training, jumped by 57,000 jobs in the second quarter to reach nearly 4.1 million annualized.

While more IT jobs were added in the second quarter, unemployment in the IT workforce remained at 5.5 percent, the same as the first quarter of this year and the highest unemployment rate during the past six years. But, according to analysis on GovInfoSecurity.com, the IT workforce is in the middle of a rebound from depleting numbers in 2008 and 2009. With growth in the IT training workforce, employers may create more specialized IT jobs to tackle new technology and projects, GovInfoSecurity.com reports.

The information technology industry has seen hope for job availability, as a recent survey of Beyond.com’s network of 15,000 career websites found IT was one of the fastest growing industries for job openings.

A common trend on the web these days is to include some content only in video form. Click on a link that you think will lead you to an interesting article or product overview, and all of the sudden a window pops up saying that some video will appear soon, or that you need to download Windows Media Player.

Since this practice is so common now, you may wonder if you should follow suit. Clearly, the ability to show video on the web creates powerful opportunities. However, if the video merely shows a talking head reading a text, why not just include the text (or at least include a text version as an option)?

Here are some reasons why you should think twice before forcing users to view your text content in the form of a video of someone reading it:

• Many users keep the sound off their computers to avoid disturbing coworkers, family members, and neighbors.

• People’s behavior and outlook are different when using the web compared to watching television. On the web, people often want instant information. Therefore, they quickly scan for what they need by skimming the text. It’s hard to skim a video.

• Even with broadband, many users don’t appreciate the excess overhead on their computers and networks that videos produce.

• A lot of people still use dial-up connections, especially when traveling.

• An increasing number of users are viewing the web with handheld devices, which have a lower bandwidth and less tolerance for complexity than regular browsers offer.

• If the user lacks the latest version of whatever plug-in is needed to watch the video, he’s unlikely to wait for the download if he’s in a hurry. He’ll probably just scrap your site and go to someone else’s.

There are a number of tools you can use for debugging CLR integration code in Visual Studio, such as the test.sql page and a special CLR debugger. Unfortunately, each new tool comes with its own quirks and setup headaches. Our recommendation is to avoid using these fancy tools unless you need to troubleshoot why something that works in Visual Studio doesn’t work when you deploy it to SQL Server.

Instead of relying on complex debugging setups, write your modules and classes in a regular project in Visual Studio and debug them there. Make sure your SQL Server stored procedures and functions are very simple; they only need to be a few lines. In those lines, you can call procedures in your modules and classes, where you do the serious work. Architecting your code this way makes code reuse much easier—as well as keeping you from having to debug more tools just to debug your code.

The Metrics That Matter Management Report, which provides a high level summary of the performance and activity of New Horizons campuses around the world through the collection of after-class evaluation forms, was recently published for the month of May. We are happy to announce that many of our centers show up on this report in assorted best of the best capacities.

Top Center Performance-summarizes scores on: courseware, environment and instructor on a 9 point scale.

Ft. Worth, TX ranked #4

Kansas City, MO ranked #7

Dallas, TX ranked #10

Top Instructor-2 categories: Application and Technical Instructors

Eric Sham – Dallas, TX #5 Application Instructor

Tim Mercer – Kansas City, MO #7 Application Instructor

Terry Smith – Dallas, TX #10 Technical Instructor

You’ll occasionally find that seemingly simple entries cause problems because Excel tries to interpret numeric values as a date. For instance, say that you have a column of product codes with values like 9-12, 10-22, and 8-2099, or you have data labels that describe the age ranges 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12. Excel automatically converts the codes to 12-Sep, 22-Oct, and Aug-99. Likewise, Excel converts the range labels to 3-Jan, 6-Apr, 9-Jul, and 12-Oct.

There are a number of ways to avoid the problem, but the easiest is to take advantage of a simple entry shortcut. Simply precede your data with an apostrophe character (‘). Doing so forces Excel to treat the entry as text data. For example, enter ’8-2099. When you complete the entry, Excel doesn’t display the apostrophe in the cell, although you can still see it in the Formula bar.

Note that Excel aligns the entry along the cell’s left edge. That’s because the entry actually becomes a text value. Because of this, you generally don’t want to use this shortcut simply to left-align numeric values. Any formulas that depend on the numeric values could return errors or incorrect results if you do.

Recruiters are targeting information technology as one of its top priorities for hiring in the second half of the year.

A recent survey conducted by CareerBuilder and USA Today asked more than 2,500 human resource professionals about hiring plans and found one in five plan to hire employees for full-time, permanent positions in the second half of the year. Information technology was the third-most recruited area for responding companies, with 18 percent looking to hire IT professionals, behind sales at 22 percent and customer service at 25 percent.

Experts recently explained trends revealed in the survey that indicate hiring during the second half of the year will be similar to the first half. CareerBuilder’s chief executive officer Matt Ferguson said “the economic recovery has broadened, but employers remain guarded.”

“The survey indicates that we’ll see sustainable new job growth through the remainder of the year, but it will be absent of any dramatic shifts,” he added.

Hiring plans for the next half of the year reflect the expectations of the IT job market. A recent survey from Express Employment Professionals projects the information technology industry to be one of the heaviest recruited fields in the third quarter.