Once on the A+ computer training course you’ll be taught how to build, fix, repair and work in antistatic conditions. Fault finding and diagnostic techniques through hands on and remote access are also covered.
Perhaps you see yourself as the kind of individual who is a member of a large organisation – fixing and supporting networks, you’ll need to add CompTIA Network+, or consider an MCSA or MCSE with Microsoft to give you a deeper understanding of the way networks work.
Many training providers still use the rather old-fashioned idea of classroom attendance. Often sold as a benefit, after discussion with someone who has first-hand experience, you’ll most likely hear about many or all of the following problems:
* Repeated travelling – 100′s of miles usually.
* Monday to Friday availability with events can be usual, and with two or three days required at a time, this is usually problematic for a lot of trainees who are working.
* Holiday days lost – most trainees only get 4 weeks annual leave. If over half of it is swallowed up by study days, that isn’t going to leave much vacation time for the family as a whole.
* ‘In-Centre’ workshop days invariably become way too big.
* Maybe you like to work at a slower or quicker pace than the rest of the class. Often this can bring about the tension often found in classrooms.
* Let’s not forget the extra expense of arranging transport and bed and breakfast for the night either. This can run to hundreds and even thousands of pounds extra. Take some time to add it all up – you may be surprised.
* A lot of trainees want their training to remain private and therefore avoiding all come-back in their job.
* Don’t think it’s unusual for trainees to not ask questions they want answered – simply down to the fact that they’re amongst other classmates.
* Where students have to on occasion work or live away part of the time, imagine the increased difficulty in travelling to the needed events, as time is now more scarce than ever.
Infinitely more flexible is to make use of filmed classes in the comfort of your own home – studying at your own pace, when it suits you – not anybody else.
Training can take place wherever it suits you. If your PC is a laptop, you could catch some sun in your garden as you learn. Any issues that arise just utilise the 24×7 Support.
Note-taking is gone forever – you have the lessons and accompanying information ready-made for you. If you need to cover something again, you’ve got it all.
Although this can’t completely avoid every little difficulty, it definitely vastly reduces stress and simplifies things. You’ve also got less hassle, travel and costs.
Quite often, students have issues with a single courseware aspect usually not even thought about: How the training is broken down and delivered to your home.
Normally, you’ll join a programme that takes between and 1 and 3 years and get posted one section at a time – from one exam to the next. While this may sound logical on one level, consider this:
What if you don’t finish every exam? What if you don’t find their order of learning is ideal for you? Because of nothing that’s your fault, you might take a little longer and therefore not end up with all the modules.
For the perfect solution, you’d get ALL the training materials right at the beginning – enabling you to have them all for the future to come back to – at any time you choose. This allows a variation in the order that you complete each objective if you find another route more intuitive.
Many men and women presume that the tech college or university path is still the best way into IT. Why then is commercial certification slowly and steadily replacing it?
Corporate based study (to use industry-speak) is far more effective and specialised. Industry has acknowledged that a specialist skill-set is what’s needed to meet the requirements of an increasingly more technical commercial environment. Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA are the big boys in this field.
In a nutshell, only required knowledge is taught. It’s slightly more broad than that, but the principle objective is to cover the precise skills needed (including a degree of required background) – without going into too much detail in every other area (as degree courses are known to do).
It’s a bit like the TV advert: ‘It does what it says on the label’. All an employer has to do is know what they’re looking for, and then advertise for someone with the specific certification. Then they know that anyone who applies can do the necessary work.
(C) Jason Kendall. Pop to LearningLolly.com for excellent advice on IT Course and Comptia Certification.
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