Education Policy

Universal Truths Are the Only Truths

It never ceases to amaze me how many people believe something that is totally untrue and makes no sense whatsoever, they go online to find verification of what they believe, they find it and then think it is the gospel truth.
Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true. You can find something on the internet to backup anything you believe, that doesn’t make it true, you are only parroting what someone else believes. They just happen to believe what you think to be true. That doesn’t prove anything except for the fact that two or more people believe the same thing, regardless of it being true or not.
Truth is elusive and hard to find, there are so many illusions out there. How can we ever determine what is true and what isn’t? If we can’t find the truth on the internet, where can we find it?
The only truths are Universal Truths or the Laws of Nature or Nature’s God. They are the truths that have survived the test of time. They are the laws that state if one does a certain action, you will get a certain result, such as gravity, or if you overspend as a person or country you will suffer the consequences.
These laws cannot be changed by congress or the supreme court. They are unchangeable, regardless if you believe them or not. If you disobey the laws, you will be punished, no if’s and’s or but’s.
These are the laws handed down by God, and preserved through the ages by many of the so-called “secret” societies. These are the laws that are given in the bible as well as many other religious and spiritual writings.
There is nothing mystical or secret about them. The only reason they are secret is because so many people are never exposed to them or if they are, they ignore them and think the laws don’t apply to them. Boy are they in for a surprise!
The sad part about it, one doesn’t even need to go looking for them, they are buried deep inside each and everyone of are the God Within, or our conscience. All we need to do is look within and they will be revealed to us.
How simple is that? Just park your ego at the door and go with what deep down inside you know to be true. Follow that simple rule and you will never go wrong.

Quality Education

Help Desk Software Can Improve Your Online Business

Nobody likes a dumb question. This includes the members of your online business team who ensure that customer complaints are met with helpful answers. Unfortunately, most customers are so excited to use their new product that they neglect to educate themselves with the user manual. These same frustrated customers will call support with questions that are easily answered, tying up the phone lines as customers with more complex complaints anxiously wait.
However, there is a solution – it’s called help desk software or customer support software. This software is designed to either help customers help themselves or to assist customers in contacting technical support. There are a couple ways that help desk software accomplishes this task.
Most customer support software will include a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ). An FAQ is a relatively short list of some of the most common questions that are asked of customer support and their answers. When customers first use help desk software, they should be exposed to a program or self-help list which will attempt to answer their questions before they ever get a chance to make a call.
Most major retailers are performing this task today by funneling customers needing support into a short questionnaire or troubleshooting session, handled by software, which will either answer the customer’s question or display contact information for phone support.
There is another option which separates the customer from costly phone support – text support in the form of chat messaging and email. The email option allows support teams to handle customer questions on their own time, allowing for more efficiency in handling complaints. It also allows more severe complaints to be handled before all others as support employees can choose which complaints they address first.
Chat messaging does not offer this triage effect for severity of complaints, but it does connect customers and support employees in a way that minimizes wait times and confusion. When on the phone, poor connections and differing accents can result in many poorly transmitted messages causing confusion and frustration. However, text is always clear and, in most cases, understood.
So you see, help desk software can do wonders for your company’s online business. While your competitors’ support teams are gridlocked with customers asking simple questions, you can educate your customers on how to use your product without even answering a complaint.
As your competitors’ support teams struggle to hear customers with bad cell phone reception or different accents than their own, your support employees will be sending satisfied, educated customers on their way. In business it all boils down to who can provide the most value to their customers. By contemplating adding help desk software to your online business, you may give your company the edge it needs to outclass the competition.

General Article

5 Really Good Reasons to Get Your Master’s Degree in Adult Education

5 Really Good Reasons to Get Your Master’s Degree in Adult Education

Everyone knows that having an associates or bachelor’s degree increases your chances of getting a better job with more salary and benefits. But you might be wondering if it is worth it to get a masters degree in adult education. In the education field there are many specialties, one of which is adult education. If that is your field of study, here are some reasons that you should get your masters.

1. Money:

The primary reason that most people choose to get their master’s degrees is that they can make more money the more education that they get. A master degree exponentially increases your earning power. Your school system probably has a pay scale that has levels depending on experience and education. The difference in the amount you get without an MS and with an MS can be several thousands of dollars a year.

2. Job opportunities:

Another good reasons are protection and advancement. If you want to go farther in your job field than a teacher then you need to have more education. School and district administrators need to have higher degrees. If teaching at a college level interests you, then you need to have at least a master’s degree in education. Not only can you advance in your current job, you also have more job openings available to you if you have to leave your old job. Having that added degree will also make you more attractive if your school district has to make cuts.

3. Licensing and continuing education:

Most state licensing boards require that teachers have to have a certain amount of continuing education each year. Going back to school to get a master’s degree in adult education is a good way to meet those requirements. Some school systems have even higher continuing educations rules for their teachers.

4. Specialization:

Getting MS degree lets you choose more specializations for your field. If you graduated with a bachelor degree in education and you want to go on to teach in adult education, then you need to have education and credentials to teach in that specialty. Having a graduate degree gives you that education and lets you get the credentials from the state. Most states and school systems will let you teach in your field as long as you are working on your post-graduate education.

5. Your personal growth:

This might not sound like the best reason, but it really is a good one. You want to challenge yourself and see how far you can go. Going on to graduate school and getting your degree in adult education shows that you can. It doesn’t matter if you are doing it straight after finishing your bachelor’s degree or if you are going back after a few years away from school, getting your degree proves to yourself that you can do it.

If you are an adult education teacher you know that you want to be the best teacher you can be. Having a master’s degree in adult education can help you with that. When you are the best teacher you are capable of being, you are then able to help your students learn what they need to be the best people they can be, too.

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Primary Education

All Things (a)Twitter – Twitter Knowledge!

Even if you are new to the internet, the chance are you have heard about “Twitter”, the micro-blogging platform where the challenge is to have your meaningful say in 140 characters or less. Besides stretching the limits of your imagination and honing your haiku skills, this social networking tool has exploded onto the internet (and traditional) marketers’ horizons with great force, and it seems every one from Oprah (the newest celeb to publicly succumb to the Twitter hype) and President Barack Obama (who is using Twitter to help drive his Health Reform Bill) right through to the Pope has cottoned onto the marketing, brand building and social opinion influencing power of this website.
Such is the power of Twitter as an opinion former (or at least influencing opinion) that even Fortune 500 companies have appointed “Official Social Networking Managers” to continuously keep their brands in the minds of its Twitter followers, expanding on the traditional brand building and brand managing efforts, boosting sales and creating more loyal followers in the process.
The internet being the internet showing no favour just because you are a Fortune 500 company, Twitter has brought tremendous power to the smaller internet and traditional marketer as well, where the small operator can generate just as much traffic to his/her website and create an on-line brand, using the same techniques Fortune 500 companies do. However, some Twitter techniques work better than others do (especially seeing it is a SOCIAL networking platform), and those who manage to tap into the social psyche more effectively than their counterparts can be assured of more traffic and a better response to their Twitter “campaign”. Here is possibly where Fortune 500 companies have the edge – they can afford to employ a Psych graduate (or two or three) or even Post Graduates to manage their Twitter campaigns, especially when it comes to shaping public opinion or influencing the netizen’s perceptions about virtually anything – from politicking to introducing a new flavour of crisps.
The REAL power of Twitter lies in that it incorporates what Seth Godin calls “Permission Marketing”. Instead of the traditional “Interruption Marketing” where what you were doing gets interrupted by a marketing message (think of those television commercials during your favourite sitcom), Permission Marketing is marketing you CHOOSE to be exposed to. Because you choose to hear this marketing message (by, in the Twitter vocabulary, FOLLOWING someone or a brand on Twitter), you are already predisposed to listen to what the marketing message is, and far more likely to ACT on such marketing. Suddenly a marketer is no longer an interruption, he has become a friend that tells you about a product or service because you ASKED him to.
Understanding the power and basic principles of a Twitter campaign is one thing. Executing it effectively can be quite another. Remember the Fortune 500 Psych Grads? They were specifically employed because they understand the human psyche, how we react to external stimuli, especially in terms of how we perceive a brand or “value”, and can employ 140 characters to achieve a desired outcome, one tweet at a time. Great marketing if you can afford the price tag.
Most small and medium companies however, CAN’T afford the price tag, and have to opt for the “self-help” option. The “one man show” almost CERTAINLY will have to opt for the self-help option, and here we meet the first real barrier to making use of Twitter to generate sales. How do you get people to FOLLOW what you are saying tweet for tweet, so that you can build relationships with them to the point where they trust you enough to act on your recommendations? More importantly, how can you be interesting enough that those who stumble across you, will actually tell all THEIR friends about you – the RETWEET phenomenon? And how will you convince these new readers to become followers?
A great number of very informative articles and books have seen the light all about exactly these issues, and can go a long way in helping you create and manage an effective Twitter campaign. In the end an effective campaign boils down to relationships, and Twitter is all about building relationships based around common interests. In this respect human nature has not changed much since the dawn of time – we like those who like us (and think like us) and like the same things we do. The psychological term is “Set”, defined as “Readiness to think or respond in a predetermined way when confronted with a problem or stimulus situation”, and like our offline relationships, our Twitter relationships will be better when we are within our own “set”. The first step in using Twitter as a business tool then, is to carefully design your Biography on Twitter, as this is what other people will judge you (and your suitability to be followed) by. Further to this, choose the people YOU will follow carefully, as even in cyberspace, you will be judged by the company you keep. Keep within your “set”.
The question still remains though, how do you get people to follow you in the FIRST PLACE? Make use of all your other communications to alert people to the fact that you are on Twitter – as part of your email signature, on your business cards and letterheads, on every blog post and website you create content for; even word of mouth works very well to generate a following on Twitter.
Once you have a following, treat them like gold, especially if you hope to sell to them at some point in the future. Make sure that at LEAST 90% of your tweets are NOT sales orientated; there is no quicker way to lose followers than to bombard them with sales pitch upon product offering that has no quality content about your mutual interests, or at least is interesting in itself! Also, a little generosity goes a long way in social networking sites. If you read a Tweet that you found helpful, or interesting, RETWEET it to your followers, including the name of the originator. By using the concept of positive affirmation you not only create goodwill towards yourself from the persons you have retweeted, but you also build your own image as someone who is more interested in providing your followers with quality information, irrespective of the source, than just punting your own products and viewpoints. Retweeting also goes a long way in adding to your follower numbers, as someone you have retweeted will be far more inclined to retweet something interesting you have to say to their followers, broadening your potential follower base.
Wishing you the best with your Tweeting campaigns, and may you dominate your niche one tweet at a time!

General Article

Earning a Certificate in Information Technology Online

Earning a Certificate in Information Technology Online

There really is no excuse anymore not to be able to obtain a qualification in your selected field of endeavor. The internet has now made it possible for anyone to be able to obtain an accredited degree all from the comforts of their own home. Earning a certificate in information technology works in the same regard, you are able to run through a curriculum of classes on your own schedule. Here are a few other things to consider before pursuing your certificate online.

The main thing that you will need to consider is the fact that there are no real classroom settings. Everything that you learn and do will be for yourself and on your own schedule. If you benefit most in learning by asking questions in a classroom setting, an online curriculum may not be for you. Although you will still be able to ask questions and receive answers to your questions, you may have to wait some time for the course professor to get back to you.

No classroom setting also means that you are going to have to be very self reliable and actually do the readings and the homework to make sure that you truly understand what is being taught in the course. Information Technology courses are mainly computer courses and will take some time to really get the hang of how to operate certain programs and hardware devices.

One main benefit of doing your degree online is the fact that you can do your homework and take the courses on your own time. If you do your best learning in the morning, all you have to do is hop out of bed, grab some coffee and hit the computer.

Earning a certificate in information technology online means that you won’t have to worry about changing your schedule around to fit your class needs. You can do just the opposite, work your classes around your schedule. This is perfect for those adults that are working full-time and don’t have the flexibility that most young kids have when they go to school fresh out of high school.

No matter what, a certificate in information technology is not going to be a walk in the park even if it is available online. You will still need to do the same amount of work, but now you will have the burden of holding yourself accountable for getting things done and following the curriculum as posted.

Importance Of Education

Twitter Or Facebook – Which is Better For Business?

Twitter or Facebook? Your starting up an online business and thinking of social networking as a means to market your product or service. You need to know which social networking site is better for that purpose. Twitter or Facebook?
We will start out by looking at Twitter. With Twitter you get 145 characters to say what you want. You need to have followers in order to be read. But, your tweet can reach millions of readers in the matter of minutes if you use the right keywords and hashtags. This can be huge for marketers. You just have to use their service correctly. Learn it.
Facebook is your other option. If you have a personal page on Twitter than you should have one for your online or offline business also. Facebook is great for getting your friends and their friends acquainted with you and your business. Many business owners also use Facebook as a way to connect to others in their niche. While others use it mainly for personal reasons.
As you can see Twitter has its advantages. You can reach millions of readers with interest in your product or service. You just have to use the right keywords and hashtags to get them to read what your saying. While at the same time Facebook can reach millions also by connecting your friends and their friends all with the click of a “like” button.
While it seems that Facebook is better, Twitter has potential. Facebook is definitely easier to reach your audience. But, with the right knowledge Twitter is an invaluable marketing tool. There are internet marketers that use both Twitter and Facebook in conjunction with each other. This type of practice might just give your product or service maximum exposure.