At the end of every week, Savvy’s Chief of Instructional Design, Terry Aurit, writes an email to our LMS subscribers and our SavvySMART Content Library subscribers. These emails prove that we are constantly updating our training content for the legal industry… and that we build genuine relationships with our clients. (Terry calls our clients, “fri-ents,” because they become our friends.)

Here are a couple of Terry’s recent emails:

August 13, 3021

Things are humming along.  My grandson started third grade on Monday.  Unfortunately, with a mask.  Poor kids.  They were maskless until a week before school started and then it all got crazy again.  Let’s hope we can fight off the new variants and get back to some sort of normalcy soon.  Although, I was just thinking that this is the ideal time to be a teenager with braces!  I would have liked to wear a mask when my mouth was full of metal!

Anyway… here’s what’s new in your Content Library this week:

NetDocuments-203: ndOffice 2.9 

(2.8.3 is the latest sub-version available for download, but 2.9 is due out any day, so we moved ahead).  We have created the full course (Topical Manual, Quick Reference Guide, Instructor Manual, Tutorial and Quiz).  When you’re ready – we’re ready.

**IMPORTANT**:  I have not copied this to any of our SavvyAcademy LMS client portals.  Please notify us if you want this course (and specify Draft or Published).  Because it is an add-in, we have no way of knowing who is using ndOffice and which version.

Word 365 Updates

W365-112: Document Formatting – We updated the branding on the eLearning and Workbook.

This finishes up the updates and rebranding for Word 365 Basics (100-level) courses.

However….

You will NOT believe this, but remember that I just updated our course on Proofing in Word 365 (W365-110)?  Well, the Microsoft gremlins apparently weren’t quite done torturing us on this topic.  As of today, when the Editor displays the items it found for your review, it no longer shows them as a raw number – it’s a percentage!!  Why?  I don’t know – because they can.

So, I’m going to circle back and redo course W365-110 to cover this.  After I throw myself off a cliff and see how that works out first.  So, let’s assume that will be next week.

With apologies to MC Hammer:

It’s Yammer Time! 

(No parachute pants required to participate!)

I have to say, our fri-ents have some of the cutest kids & grandkids I’ve ever seen.  We’ve been lucky enough to see quite a few adorable baby pics lately.  This is a good looking group!

So, share anything to our community Yammer group – your boat, your dog, your house, a pretty sunset…  Whatever makes you happy, please share with the rest of us.  In this time of seeing so few places and faces, we want to connect!  Add a comment or not… your choice.  And, don’t limit yourself to one picture – we want to celebrate everything that fills your life with joy.  [Rated E for Everyone, please!]

Have a wonderful weekend and try to enjoy what’s left of summer.

July 30, 2021

Here we are, just about to wave goodbye to July.  

In this season of Olympic-level competition, my husband and I have qualified for the “Scaffolding” finals.  Yes, it’s now time to tackle the vaulted ceilings armed with paint cans and rollers.

We have the equipment… the rooms are cleared… and the challenge is on.  The first one to break a window, light fixture or other glass item automatically forfeits the Gold medal!  As you may recall from the prelims for this event, my husband managed to punch a hole in the door with the scaffolding and I broke a ceiling light globe!  We decided that breaking a door only disqualifies us from Silver.  Breaking furniture means no Bronze can be awarded (in other words, all hope of a medal is lost).  It’s good to have rules set up in advance.

Here’s hoping we emerge victorious and don’t trigger any international incidents.  (Or a divorce?!)

Anyway, here’s what’s new for you in Savvy-ville this week…

Webinar:

We finished up our Adobe Acrobat series for July with Adobe Acrobat Pro: Protect & Standardize

If you use the SavvyAcademy LMS, we will be copying this over to your portal in Draft mode.

We had such a great response to this series that we were asked to do something similar for those of you using Kofax Power PDF.  So, we do have a couple of sessions coming up in late August and early September.  You have NOT been forgotten!

Also, watch for a MS Teams webinar next Wednesday.  I’ll send out the HotSEATS on Tuesday, but if you want to hold the time open on your calendar, it will be 8/4 at 2:00 ET.

Visio 2016:

We are all done with this short series (I’m calling it a Mini Series, without all of the drama of Roots or The Thorn Birds!).

V16-103: Format and Layout is the final course.  We’ve also created Instructor Manuals to go with each course, along with the Topical Manuals and Quick Reference Guides.  And, of course, the eLearning Tutorials and Quizzes.

As I mentioned last week, this is being treated as an “interface” refresh.  We are not going through every scenario for creating sophisticated drawings.  If someone has been using Visio, this will help them navigate the new UI and perform the tasks.  But, if someone is new to Visio, I strongly suggest also arming them with our Visio 2010 series, as it goes more in-depth on advanced Visio topics. 

Quarterly Update and Marketing Materials:

We had our quarterly update meeting this week, and I alerted you that we are adding new content to our “Rollout Kits.”  So far, we’ve been adding them to the Savvy Academy Rollout Kit folder, in the Marketing Materials subfolder.

This week we added “5 Steps to a Successful LMS Rollout.”  In fact, most of the steps presented can be easily applied to any rollout or training initiative. 

Don’t forget to check these Rollout Kits for resources that might help with your upcoming events.

Speaking of the Quarterly Update meeting, if you are the person on your team with access to our ShareFile site, you should have received an invitation to the 06-2021 Quarterly Update folder.  If you didn’t, please let me know.

Microsoft 365 (ongoing, never-to-end, purgatory…) Updates:

So, it looks like the Summer Interns at Microsoft really wanted to make a splash this week.  I updated our print materials for W365-110: Proofing last weekend to account for the new “Editor” feature that took the place of Spelling & Grammar Check or whatever it was called.  When I started to update the tutorial on Tuesday, they had already changed it again!  I kid you not.  Somebody up there in Redmond, WA is looking to get noticed – and notice it, I did!

So, that slowed the train down a bit.  We’ll have some more updates for you next week… if they would just all go back to school, or playing video games or whatever they regularly do!

Have a great weekend and stay tuned to see if “Team Terry” can survive the weekend without breaking anything and earn the Gold!

Terry Aurit, M.S.Ed.

Instructional Design for Online Learning

Chief of Instructional Design