Lesson 3 Learning Express

I found Learning Express to be more cumbersome to navigate and less helpful than I remembered it from a few years ago.

My main concern is about privacy: I don't like having to register, sign in, or have my movements tracked by any site, but this is especially concerning for people who might be exploring new job options. I emailed Learning Express to ask if there was a way to use their site without registering. If I hear back, I will add it to the bottom of this post. For this lesson, I created a fake ID and was able to register without giving an email address.

Still, I think as librarians we need to be aware of privacy issues. If a user wants to create an account that's one thing, but to require an account to access the site content I think is unnecessary and unfair. I don't know if this is something SDSL discusses when they contract with a site to offer it through the state library, but I think it should be going forward. I don't see any reassurances on the Learning Express site that they won't be using or releasing information they have collected from users.

1. For the 4th grader, I found Reading Comprehension exercises available for 5 different kinds of reading: Informational, Narrative, Persuasive, Poetry, and General Reading. I will be showing this to the Reading Specialist in our building.

2. For the woman seeking an office manager job, I first went to the Career Center and searched "office manager" but got no hits. Then I noticed the left and right arrowheads in the middle of the page and moved through options to Job Search and Workplace Skills and chose Build Your Workplace Skills from the menu on the left. There were four lessons on writing skills available, but nothing on what I think of as "management" skills: organizational skills, motivating and directing workers, basic accounting, corporate flow charts and position expectations, basic legal issues in Human Resources (taxes, insurance and benefits, harassment, etc.) I searched these topics individually without much success. 

Next I went to Prepare for an Occupation Exam and searched for "business", "office manager", "clerical", "administrative", and "human resources." No hits for any of these. I guess the only thing Learning Express can offer at this time is the writing lessons.

I will be checking other people's blogs on this question to see what else they find. "Office manager" is a pretty basic, common request and I hope there is more on Learning Express than I was able to find.

3. For the student interested in nursing or pharmacy, I went to the Career Center and chose Allied Health first. In one of the articles, there was a brief definition of what a pharmacist does, but not much else. Under the Occupational Exams center I found some tests for Pharmacy Technician Certification, but that is not the same thing as a pharmacist.

Back at the Career Center, I found a section on Becoming a Nurse, but I could not access it and the site froze three times in a row when I tried to open the document.

Here again, I am hoping others had better luck. When I used the site a few years ago, I thought it was a gold mine.

I also explored the College Prep Center and went into the AP exams. There are a number of curious 8th graders who would enjoy trying their hand at these tests, so I will be showing these to students soon. To see the exams, I did have to register, but the tests loaded smoothly and offered several different ways to take them and to use them as study aids.