Online auctions match buyers with sellers in a global marketplace for almost any item. If you've ever dreamed of working from home or just earning extra income by buying and selling goods online, this course will guide you every step of the way!

In this course, you will gain all of the knowledge necessary for success in the online marketplace. You'll learn how to create titles that get noticed, how to craft advertising copy that sells items quickly and for top dollar, and how to create and upload photos of the items you are selling. You'll also learn how to safely conduct financial transactions, how to accept credit card payments, and how to pack and ship any item hassle-free. If you're a buyer, you'll learn how to value almost any item up for auction, how to get the best possible price, how to protect yourself against fraud, and how to compete effectively against other bidders.

For more information or to register please click the link.

Are you struggling to keep up with a flood of email, articles, reports, and books? Save yourself hours of time and increase your productivity by learning to read faster and with better comprehension. This course is a complete speed-reading experience. Topics are presented in a logical progression with plenty of time to help you master the skills and techniques you will need for lasting proficiency as a speed-reader.

For more information or to register please click the link.

You may be surprised to discover that many, if not all, of the books you have read recently are mysteries. From Dan Brown to Dennis Lehane, mysteries are hot items on today's best-seller lists. This course is designed to teach you the techniques you need to know if you want to become a best-selling mystery author.

The course begins by introducing you to the four types of stories and explains how they relate to mysteries. You will discover the three-act story structure and show you how to propel the action forward to a climax, followed by a release of tension as your readers experience a great finish. You will discover the between story and plot and get a chance to experiment with viewpoints to see which one works best with your mystery. This course will allow you to write a complete scene and learn the internal structure that makes every scene feel right. You will discover special techniques that apply to mysteries, including crime scene description, MacGuffins, and the use of red herrings to misdirect your readers and create suspense. Following each lesson, you will get to practice on your own story.

This information-packed online course combines the best advice of many writing professionals. Follow the guidelines taught in this course, and you will be well on your way to writing a successful mystery of your very own.

Instructor-Led dates are as follows May 17, Jun 14, July 12 and Aug 16.

For more information or to register please click the link.

Discover Digital Photography

You'll explore a broad overview of the basics of digital photography, including equipment, software, and practical uses. We'll discuss different types of digital cameras, from phones and tablets to digital SLRs, all of which offer a wide array of photographic options. We'll also help you decide what type of equipment fits your needs and provide you with hands-on exercises that let you explore the areas that interest you.

A discussion of digital photography wouldn't be complete without digital editing options. We'll explore a number of software packages, and you'll learn how to compose your shots when you know you have digital editing available to you. You'll also find out about your digital storage options—on the camera, the computer, and even beyond into cloud storage and online backups.

Mastering Your Digital SLR Camera

Get control of your digital SLR camera! In this course, you'll break through the technology barrier and learn how to use your DSLR to take beautiful photos.

You'll start out by learning about the many features and controls of your DSLR and look at the lenses you need for the kind of photography you enjoy. Next, we'll explore exposure controls. You'll learn about metering, exposure compensation, managing aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. You'll find out how to use these features to get the right exposure for every shot.

We'll then turn our attention to flash photography, managing camera controls, photo files, and even working in manual mode. With these skills, you'll be able to take your photography to the next level. Finally, the course explores high dynamic range photos and how to master those difficult and tricky exposure situations.

Photographing People with Your Digital Camera

Photographing people can be fun, exciting – and complicated! This course will make taking beautiful pictures of adults, children, and babies simple. Don't be nervous if you're new to digital photography, because we'll start with the basic principles you need to know in order to become a people photographer. You'll discover the best way to shoot faces, fix common close-up problems, and use digital photo editing techniques to retouch your photos and make other improvements. Next, we'll move onto portrait and formal group shots, where you'll learn how to organize people, which angles to use, and which to avoid. You'll become proficient in action photography, and you'll also learn several fun and creative ways to photograph children and babies. You'll even gain expertise in filling your photographs with imagery, setting moods, and creating themes. This course will have you well on your way to becoming a skilled people photographer.

Suite bundles are not eligible for partial drops or refunds. Transfers to other open sessions of the same course are available. Please refer to your school for additional details regarding drops, transfers, and refunds on Suite bundles.

For more information or to register please click the link.

Adobe Photoshop CC (also known as Photoshop Creative Cloud) is a powerful subscription software solution providing support and specialized editing tools for digital photographers and graphic artists. In this course you will master techniques to edit and enhance your digital images and add a professional polish to your work. The course offers simple, step-by-step instructions for basics like cropping, rotation, and sizing images. You will experiment with Photoshop's tools for correcting exposure, adjusting color and colorcasts, and work with Adobe's powerful layer and selection tools. You will learn how to add text, retouch, and even clone away unwanted elements from your images. You will discover how to work with raw images and prepare images for print or online use.

In this course, you will be guided through detailed explanations and instructions for using the tools that make this software so popular and unique in the world of digital editing. Whether you are a novice or accomplished photo editor, this course will give you a collection of useful techniques that will quickly show you amazing results in your images.

For more information or to register please click the link.

Bring out the best in your photos! In this course, you'll learn how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to do everything from quick fixes to detailed enhancements that will greatly improve the look of your digital images. Even if you don't have any image-editing experience, this class will turn you into an advanced photo editor.

As you explore the program's many tools and features, you'll gain control of Photoshop Elements and create results that you never imagined possible. You'll master techniques for editing images, fixing flaws, enhancing the final product, creating simple art projects, preparing images for online use, and organizing your images.

For more information or to register please click the link.

If you've taken the first Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer course, or if you have a basic working knowledge of Photoshop Elements, this course will help you take your skills to the next level. You'll gain ability and confidence as you master the advanced features of this software, specifically designed for photo enthusiasts. Packed with hands-on activities and step-by-step instructions, this course will make you an accomplished editor.

Photoshop Elements gives you room to grow while allowing you to create exciting effects right from the beginning. Because it offers you more features and tools than you'll find in simpler programs, it broadens the options available to you as an amateur photographer. With the techniques you'll learn here, you'll be able to edit and enhance your photos with ease, and you'll have the power to transform any shot from "okay" to "wow!".

For more information or to register please click the links.

Ready, Set, Read!

Take this opportunity to find out how children really learn to read and write. Explore current research that cuts through the media messages about reading wars and the right way to teach children. Learn by reading stories about children, doing interactive assignments, and exploring the latest in parent and childcare information. You will see everyday children's play with a new eye as you understand how play can connect to literacy.

You'll learn how a child becomes literate from the moment of birth. First, you'll investigate the many things a child's growing mind must do to make sense of the written word and create writing. From there, you'll explore the development of reading and writing from infancy to the early school years. You'll know what problems to look for and how to assist a struggling reader. You will see how you can boost literacy growth during daily routines and child's play.

Gain confidence in your ability to guide a child's literacy development, and take pleasure in seeing how even the littlest events can lead to major steps in reading and writing success.

Guided Reading and Writing: Strategies for Maximum Student Achievement

Around 30% of students in sixth grade already have trouble with basic reading and writing. These literacy problems affect performance across subject areas, and they often leave teachers wondering how to help. Get the professional development training you need to improve student literacy as an accomplished teacher shares the secrets of turning guided reading strategies into opportunities for teaching writing. The road to literacy is also the road to ingenuity, invention, and imagination, and you'll soon learn how to take your students from groans to grins with creative lesson plans that really work!

We'll start our journey by talking about the reasons reading and writing are so difficult for students. Then we'll meet the total literacy framework and see how it mitigates literacy problems once and for all. Since this framework is based on guided reading lessons that flow naturally into writing challenges, you'll learn the recipe for a successful guided reading into writing lesson.

Once the framework is in place, we'll investigate a number of ways to modify this basic recipe for a variety of K-12 circumstances, wrapping up with a look at good writing habits and the traits of a productive writing conference. If you're looking for the right way to get students excited about the power of literacy, this is the course for you!

Note: To receive 25 hours of instruction in the State of Oregon, please ensure your school is eligible to issue professional development units, and that the course is approved by your professional learning coordinator.

Guided Reading: Strategies for the Differentiated Classroom

Now more than ever, today's teachers are grappling with the question of how to reach struggling readers. While there are no quick fixes, thousands of teachers are combining the principles of differentiated instruction and guided reading with unparalleled success. Mixed in the right proportion, these popular strategies will help you build a balanced literary framework that gets results with even the most challenged learners.

Differentiated instruction tactics will help you understand how your students learn so that you can teach in a way that makes sense to them. When you apply those tactics within the guided reading framework, which helps you lead students through new ways of approaching text, great things start to happen. The result is a classroom full of students who are able to negotiate increasingly challenging texts with unprecedented fluency.

This course is critical for today's educators, who often have to teach on the run with limited resources and unlimited demands on their time. Get ready to reach your readers with ease in no time flat!

Response to Intervention: Reading Strategies That Work

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be proactive in helping our struggling readers? Well, we can! In this six-week course, you'll learn response to intervention (RTI) strategies that ensure the struggling readers in your classroom get the help and education they need. RTI is research based and gives us a strategic plan to bring tiered interventions to our students, at their reading level and with their unique challenges in mind. Helping them with phonics, fluency, vocabulary mastery, comprehension, and writing, these intervention strategies tackle the toughest literacy problems with flexibility and creativity.

During our time together, you'll discover tools like Elkonin Boxes, alphabetic arcs, Bloom's Taxonomy, and new and exciting graphic organizers. Whether you're working with struggling readers in kindergarten or 12th grade, you'll find that these strategies work with a full 80% of students, without the need for special pull-outs or extra IEP intervention. Why? Because RTI gets to the root of the problem—quickly!

If you're eager to learn the right ways to help your struggling readers make steady progress throughout the year, you'll find that this course gives you the power to teach flexibly and creatively, without the need for extra training in literacy or fluency. As an added bonus, there's nothing quite like helping students discover the pleasures of reading!

Suite bundles are not eligible for partial drops or refunds. Transfers to other open sessions of the same course are available. Please refer to your school for additional details regarding drops, transfers, and refunds on Suite bundles.

For more information or to register please click the link.