24th July 2008
From 1st of September 2008 we will be updating a large number of courses offered through learning bytes. We have undertaken a detailed evaluation of alternative materials and have mapped a range of content to replace the materials that will be withdrawn from the catalogue. This means that some exciting new courses will be introduced. Any learners currently enrolled on the courses being removed will have until the end of November to complete before these are withdrawn.

15th July 2008
The Gaelic Adventure (Air Splaoid) series of 12 learning bytes has been updated following the closure of the Highland Year of Culture festivities. The content now uses a range of annual events taking place regionally as a springboard to engage learners in Scottish & Gaelic cultural heritage.

12th June 2008
The Ancestral Tourism course has been updated and revised, and is now available as 12 learning byte modules. The first two modules are available to all learners and learning centres, while the remaining titles in the series are available from Tourist Board Training.

15th May 2008
The following titles are now available on learning bytes:

learning bytes updates

New CPD courses

Five new courses are now available on topics related to Continuing Professional Development. These were developed by the University of the Highlands and Islands as part of the European Partnership programme Hi-Hopes. The bytes last 30 to 60 minutes, and are aimed at introducing the subjects at a more academically challenging level for professionals seeking to learn a new business skill.

Topics covered are as follows:

Introduction to eMarketing

Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

Introduction to Enterprise

Introduction to Leadership

Leadership for Social Enterprises

Posted on 5th Jan 2009 at 10:54
Last updated on 5th Jan 2009 at 10:54

Skillsoft Issues Resolved

The technical issues causing long delays to loading of the new Skillsoft content have now been resolved. All of these courses should now load quickly, with the largest files taking no more than 1-2 minutes. If you are still experiencing any problems with learning bytes please contact the support helpline.

Posted on 9th Dec 2008 at 11:55
Last updated on 9th Dec 2008 at 11:55

New Courses - Health & Safety

New courses in the Essential Skillz product range are now available as learning bytes:

DriveWise
Driving is the most dangerous thing that many of us do on a daily basis as the potential to cause fatalities and injuries is very high. This learning byte increases your awareness of what your responsibilities are on the road and how you can become a safe driver.

Health & Safety Induction Essentials
This learning byte introduces you to the importance of Health & Safety issues in the workplace, how current Health and Safety legislation affects you, and the role you can play to ensure your own safety.

Posted on 6th Nov 2008 at 16:58
Last updated on 6th Nov 2008 at 16:58

Essential Course Updates

The suite of popular courses provided by vendor Essential Skillz have been updated. The content covers a range of primarily health & safety skills, such as Handling Essentials and CPR Essentials. The Workstation Essentials course has now been replaced by a new title ErgoWise, which covers the same topics of good practice in working at a desk.

Learners currently enrolled on the existing versions of these courses will have until 31st January to complete them, all new enrolments will be undertaken using the new versions of the courses. The changes will automatically be updated for those learning centres offering these bytes as part of a cluster (package) of courses.

Perhaps now would be a good time to suggest H&S refresher training to your learners?

Posted on 6th Nov 2008 at 16:53
Last updated on 6th Nov 2008 at 16:53

Technical Update

In order to improve performance and address loading time issues that have been reported by some centres using the new Skillsoft content, the Skillsoft technical team based in USA will be implementing some changes to course settings. Unfortunately, this means that the courses will be offline for about an hour in afternoon or late evening of Tuesday 23rd September.

We apologise if this causes any inconvenience, however it is hoped that disruption will be minimal as we have requested the work be scheduled outside of UK office hours, and feel that making this change to enhance course performance is important for the longer term user experience.

Posted on 18th Sep 2008 at 16:28
Last updated on 18th Sep 2008 at 16:28

New Typing Course

Following evaluation, Typing Master has been selected to replace the KAZ typing course for learning bytes. The new course is available from 18th September. The KAZ content will be withdrawn from the catalogue at the end of September. Learners who are currently using KAZ will have until the end of December to complete the course.

The new typing course is designed to appeal to a broad target audience, and has a clean, intuitive and professional look in design and function.

Posted on 18th Sep 2008 at 13:05
Last updated on 18th Sep 2008 at 13:05

Teething Issues

Some problems have been reported regarding loading times of up to 15 minutes on some new Skillsoft learning bytes, generally affecting specific IT courses. This is currently being investigated with Skillsoft technical support, and we hope to resolve the issue shortly. If you are experiencing problems with the content please contact our application support team support@skillnetonline.com

Posted on 17th Sep 2008 at 11:01
Last updated on 17th Sep 2008 at 11:01

learning bytes cluster updates

learning bytes cluster updates

Following the changes to the catalogue licenced content, packages of content that contain withdrawn courses are now being removed from learning bytes. Any learners currently enroled on these clusters can continue to use the courses until 30th November when they will be deleted from learning bytes.

Any learning centre that wishes to update existing clusters or offer new packages should contact training@skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk with the title of each cluster and details of the learning bytes that it should contain. While it is possible to package multiple courses, it is recommended that each should contain no more that 4-5 bytes. For additional information on clusters, please visit the lds4centres website (click this link to go to the page).

Posted on 15th Sep 2008 at 13:12
Last updated on 15th Sep 2008 at 15:29

learning bytes are changing

From 1st of September 2008 we will be updating a large number of courses offered through learning bytes. We have undertaken a detailed evaluation of alternative materials and have mapped a range of content to replace the materials that will be withdrawn from the catalogue. This means that some exciting new courses will be introduced. Any learners currently enrolled on the courses being removed will have until the end of November to complete before these are withdrawn.

Posted on 31st Jul 2008 at 16:32
Last updated on 15th Sep 2008 at 15:29

SkillSoft content goes live!

The replacement products for the NETg and Xebec courseware are now available to use in learning bytes.

Over 200 learning bytes courses have now been replaced. Critical updates have also been made to ensure IT courses are up-to-date, including materials on Windows Vista. New products available also include industry sector overviews and additional UK relevant legislation topics.

Learners who are currently enrolled on the NETg and Xebec courses that have been withdrawn may continue to work through the materials to complete their learning. The products are no longer available to new learners, and will be permanently removed from the catalogue on 30th November 2008.

Posted on 1st Sep 2008 at 12:11
Last updated on 1st Sep 2008 at 12:16

Skillsoft Technical Settings

A technical user guide for configuring IP details is now available in the Technical Support page. Please note the following update to the section on Akamaised Content Servers provided by Skillsoft:

Akamaised Content Servers

SkillSoft subscribes to the services of Akamai Technologies (http://www.akamai.com) for global content ‘edge caching’. This means that SkillSoft e-Learning content is ‘on demand’ cached and served from over 14000 servers globally.  

As these servers are located globally in numerous ISP’s and data centres it is impossible to provide IP Address ranges, and so the Akamai service cannot be used if you organisations uses IP based whitelists to control access. 

If your organisation uses DNS based whitelists then as well as the DNS names listed above, the Akamai DNS names listed below need to be included.

*.akamaiedge.net

*.edgesuite.net

*.edgekey.net 

The reason for this is that the Akamai service uses DNS aliasing. The DNS name the content is served from will always be one as listed in the “DNS Whitelisting” section above but if your filtering software uses reverse DNS lookups it will identify the server as been on one of the above Akamai DNS names. 

For example the NSLOOKUP for xlibrary.skillport.com returns:

Non-authoritative answer:

Name:  e434.l.akamaiedge.net

Address:  88.221.45.222

Aliases:  xlibrary.skillport.com

              xlibrary.skillport.com.edgekey.net

Posted on 28th Aug 2008 at 14:18
Last updated on 1st Sep 2008 at 12:15

Cairngorms Online Course

Tourist Board Training have agreed to make this course freely available to all branded learning centre learners, who may now enrol on the course through their own local learning centre.

Posted on 28th Aug 2008 at 13:57
Last updated on 28th Aug 2008 at 13:57

Learning Centre Academy

The online catalogue has now been updated to include details of learning bytes courses available to learning centre staff as part of their professional development through the Learning Centre Academy. These courses are restricted to staff only, and are not available to client learners. They include a range of learning resources on supporting and interacting with various client groups, good practice in advice and guidance provision, and theory and practice in learning delivery.

Posted on 1st Aug 2008 at 15:16
Last updated on 1st Aug 2008 at 15:16

Catalogue Update 31st July 08

The online catalogue has now been updated to include information on the new Skillsoft courses available from 1st September. These will replace the existing Xebec and NETg courses covering a wide range of topics. The descriptors for the courses that are being withdrawn are no longer visible within this site, however learners may continue to enroll on these courses within learning bytes until the end of August, and may continue to access them until the end of November 2008.

The structure of the catalogue has also been slightly modified to improve access:
The categories Business Skills: Professional Development and Life Skills: Personal Development have been merged, and now appear as Life Skills: Personal & Professional Development

The category Business Skills: Legislation has been removed, and the small number of courses affected have now been placed in the relevant sections of Business Skills relating to People Management and Health & Safety.

Posted on 31st Jul 2008 at 16:33
Last updated on 31st Jul 2008 at 16:33