This essential course for teachers, leaders, and parents will give you the confidence you need for helping children get the best from Internet access. Step-by-step instructions will lead you in discovering various kid-friendly Internet features. These include web page creation with easy-to-use templates and examples, kid-safe searches, fun resources for kids; and the many communication possibilities for schools, clubs, teacher networks, and even extended families. This course includes lessons for you, the adult, but also features printable instruction sheets that can be used directly with the young people you work with. The activities are informative, interactive, and fun; and, most importantly, will help you and your kids use the Internet to its fullest potential.

Learn to handle basic human resource functions to ensure the best possible results.

Learn to deal with the realities of managing projects at supersonic speeds despite truncated timelines, inadequate staffing, and skimpy budgets.

An experienced entrepreneur teaches you how to develop the motivation, discipline, and creativity to quit your job and be your own boss.

This course will help you discover what you need to know to homeschool your children. You´ll see how to find the laws and regulations that govern your community and become familiar with the terminology the homeschool community uses. We´ll discuss learning styles and how they affect homeschooling. We´ll also talk about children that need extra attention, both special needs and gifted, and a variety of types of homeschooling so you can choose the one that best fits your family´s lifestyle. You will discover how homeschooling gives you the opportunity to socialize your children as well as build long-lasting and productive relationships with peers and adults and teach valuable life skills at the same time. When you finish this course, you´ll have lots of information and guidance to plot your homeschooling course for years to come! Note: Internet access, email, and Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Mozilla Firefox required

Are you planning a career as a graphic artist? If so, this course is for you! Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard for creating vector image, graphics that artists can resize to fit on anything from a dome to a billboard, and it is the program of choice for drawing logos and designing type effects. In addition, it is an outstanding companion tool to Adobe Photoshop, and it is perfect for creating graphics for Flash sites. In this course, you will learn how to use a wide range of tools in Adobe Illustrator CS4, including the enhanced Recolor Artwork feature and the redesigned Gradient tool. By the end of the course, you will be a master at using Illustrator to further your career and express your own creativity. Note: Adobe Illustrator CS4 for Windows and Windows XP or Vista or Adobe Illustrator CS4 for Mac and Mac OS X Illustrator software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

In this course, you will learn how to use a wide range of tools in Adobe Illustrator CS5. For instance, you will explore the enhanced Recolor Artwork feature, which helps you choose a harmonious color scheme for your image and completely alter the color palette of any image with just a few clicks. You will also see how the redesigned Gradient tool makes it easier to adjust colors directly on an image. You can even paint brushstrokes on your canvas, using brushes that look and work like the bristle brushes from an art supply store. In addition, you will learn how to draw and trace with the Pen tool and how to fine-tune the contours of any line. You´ll also discover how to work with color, use shortcuts for applying color to images, and add special effects such as 3D to your drawings. Note: Adobe Illustrator CS5 (Windows or Macintosh); software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins. You will need Windows 7, Vista, or XP, or Mac OSX.

In this Adobe InDesign CS4 class, you´ll get hands-on training in desktop publishing and come away knowing how to use this popular page layout software to design and create professional quality letterhead, newsletters, business cards, brochures, PDF files that play movies, and more.

In this fun, hands-on course, you´ll dig into advanced features that will take your InDesign projects to the next level. First, you´ll design a graphics-packed two-page spread for a luxury spa. Then you´ll work with tables, custom templates, and color sampling to produce a tent-card menu. After that, you´ll learn about using an InDesign book workflow. Next, you will use a mail merge to create a photo cube invitation to an art gallery, complete with captions produced from your images´ metadata. You´ll master everything from calibrating your monitor and using the Adobe Color Management System to working with printing tools and managing spot colors and mixed ink. For the grand finale, you´re going to build and test an eBook, exported from InDesign as an EPUB file.

In this Adobe InDesign CS5 class, you´ll get hands-on desktop publishing training and come away knowing how to use this popular page layout software to design and create professional-quality letterhead, business cards, brochures, PDF files that play movies, and more. Note: Adobe InDesign for Windows, Adobe CS5 Design Premium for Windows, Adobe CS5 Master Collection for Windows, InDesign CS5 for Mac, Adobe CS5 Design Premium for Mac, or Adobe CS5 Master Collection for Mac (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (1.5GHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended), and QuickTime 7 software required for multimedia features)

This dynamic course makes learning Italian fun and surprisingly easy. You´ll learn how to ask directions, book a room, order a meal, and much morein Italian! Phonetic spellings of each word and phrase make mastering pronunciation a breeze. The course audio even lets you hear and practice Italian with a simple click of your mouse. Cultural notes are included throughout the course to help you better understand the Italian people and their way of life. This course will prepare you to speak basic Italian in a wide variety of settings and situations, and it promises to enrich your experiences while traveling in Italy. Benissimo! Note: Internet access, email, Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Mozilla Firefox required

Todays teachers are using two powerful approachesDifferentiated Instruction (DI) and Response to Intervention (RTI)to help every child succeed academically. In this course, youll learn how to put this dynamic duo to work in your own classroom teaching and lesson plans. Case studies and examples will help you see how DI and RTI strategies work in the real world, and youll get lots of ideas for hands-on activities you can start using right away in your own classroom. Throughout this course, youll have opportunities to practice new techniques and exchange ideas with fellow educators and your instructor. Youll come away armed with powerful and easy-to-implement strategies that will benefit every student you teach.

Learn Literary Braille and prepare for the Library of Congress Braille Transcriber´s Certification exam. Explore the 63 contractions that make up Grade II Braille.

In this course, you´ll take your CSS and XHTML skills to the next level and learn how to create professional-quality Web sites. You will learn to quickly build effective sites that are easy to maintain and modify. You´ll discover the secrets to ensuring you keep total creative control over every aspect of a site. You´ll master specific techniques for creating flexible, table-less page layouts that adapt to all Web browsers, screen resolutions, and user needs. And you´ll learn how to build accessibility and search engine optimization into those page layouts.

You will get hands-on practice in using pure CSS layout and discover how to incorporate multimedia elements such as Flash video and audio. In addition, you will explore the use of XML and XSL. Note: Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 or CS5.5 for Windows, or Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 or CS5.5 for Macintosh; (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Windows XP with Service Pack 3; Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1; or Windows 7; or Mac OS X v10.5.8 or v10.6.

Deepen your understanding of the Java programming language, and start writing programs that are more sophisticated and professional. Learn how to save data permanently on a disk by writing it to a sequential data file. See how to read the file to get the data back and process it. Organize information using multiple classes in Java´s class hierarchy and inheritance. Explore some of the hundreds of classes that are built into the Java language. Find out how to create GUI applications in Java using tools like windows, menus, buttons, text boxes, check boxes, scroll bars, and other GUI tools. Note: Java SE (Standard Edition) Development Kit (JDK) Version 5 or later, from Sun Microsystems (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins)

Learn how to create an interactive online store complete with an online catalog of products, allowing customers to browse the catalog to select items, place them in a shopping cart, and complete an order. In this six-week online course, you´ll see how to create a commercial online store using the PHP programming language and the MySQL database server Note: A PHP and MySQL development environment (the first lesson in the course walks through installing the Wampserver software, which provides a full PHP and MySQL development environment in one package; Macintosh users can´t use the Wampserver software and must provide their own PHP and MySQL development environment.

Learn advanced techniques for using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to edit your images and photos. You´ll discover how to save every pixel in your original image. You´ll see how to the use Smart Objects so you can crop an image or resize it and get it back to its original size months later. You´ll master tricks for warping Smart Objects and you´ll learn how to make adjustments to your images that you can tweak at any time to add shadows or embossing.

Gain in-demand VB skills writing sophisticated Windows programs that implement Structured Query Language to access and modify business databases. This course is ideal if you´re a Visual Basic programmer and want to upgrade your programming skills or prepare yourself for an exciting new line of work. Note: Required: Visual Basic 2008, free Express edition (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Computer with Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008; completion of Jeffrey Kent´s Introduction to Visual Basic 2008 online course (or equivalent experience); this course is not suitable for Macintosh users.

PL/SQL is Oracle´s procedural language extension to Structured Query Language (SQL). This course will give you the skills you need to write powerful and flexible programs using that language. You´ll learn the building blocks and core features of PL/SQL, including expressions, various iterations, and built-in functions. Then, you´ll begin building fully functional PL/SQL programs with procedures, packages, debugging routines, database structures, triggers, and cursor processing. By the time you finish this course, you will be able to store PL/SQL programs in a database and execute them.