TRAINING AND FINANCIAL AID

• An extensive list of education and training providers (schools) are available for your review at New York State Workforce Training Providers site. You can search by geographical area, occupation, and educational level desired.



• Apprenticeship Opportunities - Apprenticeship is the process of learning a skilled occupation through both on-the-job training (Practical, paid experience) and learning the related technical knowledge in a classroom.
  
  
• There are a number of Financial Aid resources available to assist people in need of training. The Columbia Greene Career Center can provide you with information about WIA Title IB, VESID, Welfare to Work, TRA/NAFTA and PELL. For additional grants and scholarships check out the following sites:
  
  -Career Zone
  -Fastweb
  -Gov Benefits.gov
  -Federal Student Aid
  -Scholarship Help
  -Financial Aid Facts
  - New York State Higher Education Services Corporation



• There are two public educational institutions available in the two counties that offer services to adults.
  
  -Columbia Greene Community College
  -Questar III



• Keyboarding Help:
  Introduction to Microsoft Office 2007 Basic Clerical/Computer Literacy. This is a helpful tool for Microsoft 2007 users and it is the Student Guide for the 60 Hour Columbia Greene Community College, Computer Literacy Program.
  
  Good Typing: Learn to type at this no cost site. This site offers various on line keyboarding lessons in many languages http://www.goodtyping.com/
  
  Learn 2 Type: Test you speed and register to obtain verifiable certificates. http://www.learn2type.com/TypingTest
  
  Use the Google search and enter " Keyboard Speed Test." A variety of helpful sites will be available
  
  

  Need a Word Processing program but can't afford Microsoft products? Go here for OpenOffice.org
  ( Please be clear that this is a download program that needs to be installed before it can be used and should not be downloaded if the participant is not the owner of the computer or if they are not comfortable with loading programs into a computer.)

• MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Open Courseware - Free On Line Classes, Non Credit Bearing & No Registration: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
• OER Commons- Open Educational Resources http://www.oercommons.org/ Free-to-Use Teaching and Learning Content from around the World. Organize K-12 Lessons, College Courses, and more.
• Academic Earth- Free video courses from leading universities. http://www.academicearth.org/

If you can't find something you are looking for, please contact the Columbia-Greene Career Center for more assistance, (518) 828-4181 ext. 5510,TDD/TTY (518) 828-1399 or e-mail us .