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Tag: learning

  • Facebook Launches Blueprint Certification, New Credentials for Digital Advertising Professionals.

    Facebook Launches Blueprint Certification, New Credentials for Digital Advertising Professionals.

    As part of its Blueprint learning platform, Facebook is launching Blueprint Certification, a new credential for digital advertising professionals. Facebook says that “whether you are an agency or a digital marketer Facebook’s new Blueprint Certification can help you stand out in the industry.”

    “As an agency you can set the bar for your existing staff, quickly identify and hire new talent with proven capabilities and confidentially pitch a broad range of work,” noted Facebook in their introductory video for Blueprint Certification. “As a digital marketer your qualifications and credentials are now objectively measured and verified so you stand apart from the competition.”

    Blueprint Certification shows your mastery of specific job related skills including:

    • Facebook Advertising
    • Instagram Advertising
    • Messenger Advertising
    • Buying and Planning on Facebook properties
    • Facebook Analytics and Reporting

    Once a marketer passes their secure proctored online exam, they are awarded a badge that can be placed on Facebook pages, online resume, professional websites and on email signatures.

    “No matter what your role is in the advertising industry, Blueprint Certification can give you the edge you need,” stated Facebook in their announcement. “Blueprint Certification helps digital advertising professionals differentiate themselves in a competitive job market, provides the advertising industry with a better understanding of Facebook advertising to help maximize ROI and gives businesses a way to select and retain people with expertise in the Facebook family of products and services. Blueprint Certification is not only the most rigorous and reliable measure of Facebook advertising competency, it’s the only one officially recognized by Facebook.”

    Launching now is the Facebook Certified Planning Professional which is targeted to digital media planners for those proficient in planning successful Facebook advertising campaigns. This will be followed in the coming weeks by Facebook Certified Buying Professional targeted to media buyers who are “proficient in creating and buying Facebook advertising” with the maximum ROI.

    Facebook says that marketing professionals will first select their certification paths and then take two proctored exams: the Facebook Advertising Core Competencies exam, and then the exam in their chosen specialty. Marketers can take the exam online with the use of a web-based Proctor the program will connect you with. with recertification required annually to demonstrate ongoing proficiency as Facebook products evolve. The exams are currently only available in English, with other languages rolling out over time.

    Blueprint already offers Blueprint eLearning modules as well as hands on training via Blueprint Live.

    “Blueprint Live is an interactive training program that we built for even seasoned clients that takes a case-based approach to learning,” says Ashley Gestrich in a Blueprint Live intro video. Gestrich was the Global Lead of Facebook Blueprint Live, but now works in marketing at Pinterest. “We’ve found that even seasoned clients learn better when they take concepts and apply them immediately so they stick. We actually give them a hypothetic brief or business plan and they take Facebook marketing principals and tell us how they bring them to life during a series of campaign based activities.”

  • Bing Ads Academy Training Program Announced

    Microsoft announce the launch of Bing Ads Academy, a new training program for advertisers to learn how to get more out of Bing Ads. There are courses for both newer customers and those who have been at it for a while.

    Bing Ads Academy consists of both online and in-person courses. They’re offered to premium customers working for agencies, as well as channel partners and tool providers.

    “Whether you’re brand new to PPC and need our 101-level content to get up to speed on the basics of setting up and running your first campaign, or if you’ve been managing PPC campaigns for years and want to get 301-level expert tactics for maximizing your return on investment, Bing Ads Academy can help,” says Bing’s Tina Kelleher. “If you’ve ever attended a webinar or a Bing Ads Connect event, then you already have an idea of what you can expect with Bing Ads Academy: on-demand virtual classrooms, as well as live, in-person trainers who will dive deep on specific topics to help you become more proficient in your Bing Ads campaign management and optimization skills.”

    “Because Bing Ads Academy is intended for people working in the premium segment of agencies, channel partners and tool providers, the primary content focus is on topics relevant to ‘Sellers’ (who pitch Bing Ads as a media buy to their clients) and ‘Do-ers’ (those who work within the Bing Ads platform on a daily basis),” Kelleher says. “The ‘Sellers’ will gain a better understanding of why Bing Ads is a smart buy for their clients and the ‘Do-ers’ can hone their ROI skills with specific strategies and tactics based on key features in Bing Ads.”

    Trainers include Eric Couch, Monica Orsino, Rachel Rogowin, and Purna Virgji. They all have extensive industry experience. You can learn more about their backgrounds and credentials here.

    Bing Ads continues to be an increasingly better business for Microsoft with the company recently reporting that it has turned a profit.

    “In search, we expect Bing’s strong trajectory to continue, remaining profitable for the remainder of the year,” said CFO Amy Hood.

    CEO Satya Nadella noted that Bing’s share is up to 20.7% in the U.S. with ad revenue growing 29% worldwide, helped by Windows 10 users asking Cortana over a billion questions. He later said, “I’m very, very excited obviously about what’s happening with Bing.”

    Images via Bing Ads, Chandler Dances on Things

  • Here’s Your Chance To Learn Google Tag Manager

    Google has a new training course available for marketers, analysts, and developers aimed at teaching them about Google Tag Manager and how it can simplify tag implementation and management. It’s the latest addition to the company’s Analytics Academy learning program.

    Google launched Tag Manager back in 2012 as a way to consolidate the various tags you may use for your site into one snippet of code, and to manage from a single web interface. Since then, it’s received various feature additions including templates and an API.

    Topics covered in the new course will include core concepts/principles of tag management with Tag Manager; creating website tags and managing firing triggers; enhancing Google Analytics implementation; using Data Layer to collect data; and configuring other marketing tags, such as AdWords Conversion Tracking and Dynamic Remarketing.

    “You’ll join instructor Krista Seiden to explore topics through the lens of a fictional online retailer, The Great Outdoors and their Travel Adventures website,” explains Lizzie Pace from the Google Analytics Education team. “Using practical examples, she’ll show you how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords tags to improve your data collection process and advertising strategies.”

    The course schedule is as follows:

    Pre-Course Survey
    Unit 1 – Starting out with Google Tag Manager
    Assessment 1
    Unit 2 – Setting up Google Tag Manager
    Assessment 2
    Unit 3 – Collecting data using the Data Layer, variables, and events
    Assessment 3
    Unit 4 – Using additional tags for marketing and remarketing
    Assessment 4
    Post-Course Survey

    You can register here. The course content, community, and certificates will be available between June 23 and July 24. After that, you can still complete the material, but won’t have access to course forums, and won’t be able to earn a certificate.

    In terms of prerequisites, Google suggests you either have a basic understanding of Google Analytics or complete its Digital Analytics Fundamentals course.

    Image via YouTube

  • Geenio Makes Course-Authoring Easier For Organizations

    Commissioned News Story (Source: Geenio)

    A lot of modern organizations are already using some form of e-learning technology for employee onboarding, training, performance, and assessment initiatives, but online training courses often don’t live up to the needs of instructors, trainees, or purchasing managers.

    Geenio, which makes course-authoring tools for organizations, is trying to change that, and has built what it calls the Pathboard. This is a course-authoring mode for its software that can be used to add new pages, sets of pages (lessons), questions and sets of questions (tests) to courses. The tool enables course authors to see all possible learning paths and course branches because it represents non-linear courses in an easy-to-use visual style.

    According to the company, non-linear courses mimic the natural learning process by providing alternative learning paths for students. Authors can build courses of varied complexity by modifying the presentation of materials in response to student performance and demonstrated level of knowledge.

    “During the development process we had a very special set of requirements for the course editor because we wanted to build non-linear courses that would adjust in complexity depending on the student’s abilities and change the way the student would go through the course,” said Konstantin Andreev, founder and CEO of Geenio. “Our observations revealed that each student’s frame of mind and comfort were the cornerstones for a successful learning experience. A positive attitude helped students to digest new information and later turn it into skills. An overly complicated course would demotivate students, resulting in tiredness and dissatisfaction.”

    “An overly simplistic course, on the contrary, would make a learner bored,” Andreev added. “Such a learner would simply be clicking through the course, instead of processing information and gaining new skills. The main conclusion from these observations was the need to adapt the complexity of a course to the student’s level of knowledge.”

    That’s where the Pathboard comes in. It builds on the concept that there may be several parallel ways to go through a course. A student might start at the medium level of complexity, and after a few pages, take an assessment that gauges the current level of knowledge. The users can then be redirected to a more advanced path, kept at the same level, or moved a step back to seea more detailed explanation of basic things. This depends on what the course author deems appropriate.

    The Pathboard also lets the course creator look at the map of a course from a bird’s-eye view to add new course objects, edit interactions between them, and change the sequence of learning modules in the course if need be. Authors can make knowledge checkpoints throughout the course and direct their audience to appropriate learning paths.

    Geenio recently raised a $2 million seed round of funding from several individual private investors. The company said it would use funds to continue building its team and strengthen its product/market fit.

    About Geenio

    Geenio Group is an international company with offices in Europe and USA, Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit https://geen.io.

  • Does iPad Impact Children’s Learning Curve?

    While researchers scramble to determine whether it is good or bad idea to allow children to use iPad’s or similar touchscreen devices for extended periods of time, many children already have access to the devices and can navigate them quite well. Some researchers have an inclination to generalize what they know about television watching and apply it to our touchscreen interactive devices. I am not an expert on child learning and psychology, but I will tell you we are looking at two totally different animals.

    Technology and more specifically the internet and communication has made the world a much smaller and more informed place. by that I mean that knowledge is all around us and if you want to visit somewhere to see what it is like, you don’t have to organize a grand expedition and spend thousands of dollars. You simply jump on Google and search images and read stories. You can even network socially with people all the way across the planet.

    Imagine how long it took cavemen to communicate a simple concept or discovery. That time decreased with the establishment of a common language and written communication system. The learning curve decreased even more once books and other media started disseminating the information on a large scale. Soon we could take advantage of technology and keep ourselves warm and well-fed without communicating directly with the person who made the discovery.

    Fast forward a couple thousand years to the invention of the internet and eventually the modern day iPad. Now we have volumes of information literally right at our fingertips. Do you think intelligence has the potential to progress and grow even faster? Hell yes it does. Tons of research suggests we aren’t even tapping a fraction of the potential of our minds to process and utilize information. Interactive devices are technologies answer to that challenge.

    Guess what parents? Our brains are already formed and the evolution isn’t gong to happen with us, but our children are still capable of harnessing the power the technology affords. Of course, it isn’t healthy to let our children get fully observed into our iPads 24/7 but, it isn’t hurting them unless you’re exposing them to inappropriate information.

    Face it folks, you aren’t exactly the picture of entertainment and education after you get done with an eight hour workday and 45 minutes of stressful grocery shopping and running errands. Kids need something to stimulate their imaginations and facilitate creativity. You bitching about the office isn’t it.

    What they are learning while they’re using your iPad depends on what you give them access to, but if you’re wondering if it is making them smarter? The answer is yes.

    (Top Image Courtesy of ParentsExpert.com)

  • Software That Senses Human Emotions

    Emotion-sensing computer software that models and responds to students’ cognitive and emotional states – including frustration and boredom – has been developed by University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Psychology Sidney D’Mello and colleagues from the University of Memphis and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. D’Mello also is a concurrent assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

    The new technology, which matches the interaction of human tutors, not only offers tremendous learning possibilities for students, but also redefines human-computer interaction.

    “AutoTutor” and “Affective AutoTutor” can gauge the student’s level of knowledge by asking probing questions, analyzing the student’s responses to those questions; proactively identifying and correcting misconceptions; responding to the student’s own questions, gripes, and comments; and even sensing a student’s frustration or boredom through facial expression and body posture and dynamically changing its strategies to help the student conquer those negative emotions.

    “Most of the 20th-century systems required humans to communicate with computers through windows, icons, menus, and pointing devices,” says D’Mello, who specializes in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence in education.

    “But humans have always communicated with each other through speech and a host of non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, eye contact, posture, and gesture. In addition to enhancing the content of the message, the new technology provides information regarding the cognitive states, motivation levels, and social dynamics of the students.”

    AutoTutor is an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that helps students learn complex technical content in Newtonian physics, computer literacy, and critical thinking by holding a conversation in natural language; simulating teaching and motivational strategies of human tutors; modeling students’ cognitive states; using its student model to dynamically tailor the interaction to individual students; answering students’ questions; identifying and correcting misconceptions; and keeping students engaged with images, animations, and simulations. In addition to these capabilities, Affective AutoTutor adds emotion-sensitive capabilities by monitoring facial features, body language, and conversational cues; regulating negative states such as frustration and boredom; and synthesizing emotions via the content of its verbal responses, speech intonation, and facial expressions of an animated teacher.

    The study, titled “AutoTutor and Affective AutoTutor: Learning by Talking with Cognitively and Emotionally Intelligent Computers that Talk Back” that details this new technology will be published in a special edition of ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems that highlights innovative technology of the last decade.

    “Much like a gifted human tutor, AutoTutor and Affective AutoTutor attempt to keep the student balanced between the extremes of boredom and bewilderment by subtly modulating the pace, direction, and complexity of the learning task,” D’Mello says.

    Considerable empirical evidence has shown that one-on-one human tutoring is extremely effective when compared to typical classroom environments, and AutoTutor and Affective AutoTutor closely model the pedagogical styles, dialogue patterns, language, and gestures of human tutors. They are also one of the few ITSs that help learning by engaging students in natural language dialogues that closely mirror human-human tutorial dialogues.

    Tested on more than one thousand students, AutoTutor produces learning gains of approximately one letter grade – gains which have proven to outperform novice human tutors and almost reach the bar of expert human tutors.

  • eBooks Are Beginning to Replace Textbooks in the Classroom

    Technology has forced changes in the role of textbooks in education, and e-books have been gaining popularity, along with standard textbook rental. Companies like Chegg rent both standard textbooks and e-textbooks, and Amazon’s Kindle Store claims students can save up to 80%, as well as designate the length of the rental.

    Two of the most popular e-book readers are the Apple iPad, and the Amazon Kindle Fire. The Amazon Kindle Store offers over 1 million publications for use on both platforms, and Apple’s iBooks 2 allows students to engage in interactive material, as well as take assessments.

    Advances in the online classroom have harbored a more student-oriented approach to learning, as tablet devices can be linked to projectors in the classroom setting. Also, all formerly written materials can be more easily accessed, making note-taking more efficient, and digital library research functions make student publishing easier.

    With these advances comes the concern of content ownerships, copyrights and plagiarism, and it is important for educational institutions to properly manage online ethics, without getting in the way of the classroom learning process. More information can be found at Online Universities.

    The Digital Classroom
    Via: Accredited Online Universities Guide

  • You Could Be Incepted Soon

    We’ve already said that it’s only a matter of time before we’re just uploading knowledge into our noggins in order to learn everything from origami to piano so the next logical step in humanity’s quest to be “just like in the movies” would be a scourge of mind-thievery.

    In other words, cue the intense music because researchers at Yale think it’s only a matter of time before people are able to use lucid dreams to not just learn abilities but possibly invade the dreams of others.

    According to The Daily Mail, Yale researcher Robert Morgan thinks these regions of the brain can be accessed for improved social control and decision-making. “We know that by engaging circuits in the brain we can change its architecture,” Morgan says. The Daily Mail continues:

    Being in command of dreams opens up opportunities to manipulate them for learning and training – although it may not be quite as precise as learning to play the violin while asleep. Instead, ‘lucid dreamers’ can control areas of their brain to open up and ‘learn’ while they sleep. What’s more, it seems that merely being a lucid dreamer seems to give you an advantage.

    So as the subtitle above suggests, take a hint from Mr. Jack Donaghy:

    Because the next time you doze off on a plane you may wake up with a stirring hunger for some kung-fu robbery. Be careful, readers.