by Jason Kendall
CompTIA A+ consists of 4 training sections; you’re thought of as an achiever in A+ when you’ve achieved certifications for 2 out of 4 subjects. For this reason, it’s usual for colleges to only teach 2 specialised areas. You’ll find that you will need the information on each subject as industry will require knowledge and skills of each specialist area. It’s not essential to pass exams in all of them, but we would recommend you take tutorials in all 4 subjects.
If you decide to become a student on the A+ training course you’ll be taught how to build and repair PC’s and operate in antistatic conditions. You’ll also cover fault finding and diagnostics, through both hands-on and remote access. If you add Network+ to your CompTIA A+ training course, you will additionally be able to look after networks, meaning you’re in a position to move further up the career path.
How can we make an informed choice then? With all this potential, it’s important to know where to investigate - and what it is we should be looking for.
There are a myriad of job availability in Information Technology. Picking the right one for yourself is a mammoth decision. Scanning a list of IT job-titles is next to useless. The majority of us don’t really appreciate what the neighbours do for a living - so what chance do we have in understanding the intricacies of a particular IT career. Ultimately, any kind of right decision only comes through a systematic study across many altering factors:
* What hobbies you’re involved with in your spare-time - often these show the areas you’ll get the most enjoyment out of.
* Are you looking to achieve a key aspiration - like working for yourself as quickly as possible?
* The income needs you may have?
* Understanding what the normal Information technology types and markets are - including what sets them apart.
* Having a proper look at the level of commitment, time and effort that you’re going to put into it.
In these situations, the only way to research these matters will be via a meeting with someone who has a background in IT (and more importantly the commercial needs.)
Many trainers only provide office hours or extended office hours support; not many go late into the evening (after 8-9pm) or cover weekends properly. Find a good quality service with proper support available at any time of the day or night (even 1am on Sunday morning!) Make sure it’s always direct access to tutors, and not simply some messaging service that means you’re constantly waiting for a call-back - probably during office hours.
Keep looking and you’ll come across the top providers that provide their students online support all the time - at any time of day or night. Don’t compromise where support is concerned. The majority of trainees who throw in the towel, are in that situation because of support (or the lack of).
We can guess that you’ve always enjoyed practical work - a ‘hands-on’ personality type. Typically, the painful task of reading endless manuals is something you’ll force on yourself if you absolutely have to, but you really wouldn’t enjoy it. Consider interactive, multimedia study if you’d really rather not use books. Long-term memory is enhanced when all our senses are brought into the mix - this has been an accepted fact in expert circles for decades now.
Interactive audio-visual materials involving demonstration and virtual lab’s will beat books every time. And you’ll find them fun and interesting. Every company that you look at must be able to demonstrate samples of the materials provided for study. You should hope for instructor-led videos and interactive areas to practice in.
Often, companies will only use purely on-line training; sometimes you can get away with this - but, consider how you’ll deal with it if you lose your internet access or you get intermittent problems and speed issues. It is usually safer to have DVD or CD discs which will not have these problems.
A lot of training providers are still maintaining the rather old-fashioned idea of classroom attendance. Very often portrayed as a huge benefit, following a chat with most students who’ve had to attend a couple, you’ll hear a common theme of many or all of these issues:
* Loads of travelling - multiple journeys and normally hundreds of miles a time.
* If you work for a living, then Monday to Friday events are hard to attend. You could be having to deal with several days in a row too.
* Lost holiday days - many students only get 4 weeks annual leave. If you give up at least half to your study days, that isn’t going to leave much vacation time for most student’s families.
* Workshops often reach their maximum intake very quickly, giving us the only option of a slot that doesn’t really suit.
* Tension can be created in many classes where students want to progress at their own pace.
* Add up the cost of all the travelling, accommodation, food and parking and you could be in for a major shock. Attendees have reported extra costs of between several hundred and a couple of thousand pounds. Sit down and add it up - and you’ll see how.
* You should never risk any chance of being side-stepped for a possible promotion or income boosts while you’re training.
* Raising questions in a class full of students will sometimes make us a little nervous. Have you ever left a question un-asked because you honestly thought you might seem thick?
* It should be remembered that classes become nigh on impossible to attend, in cases where you live or work away from home for part of your week or month.
Why not simply watch and be taught by industry specialists one-on-one via pre-made modules, studying them when it suits you - not somebody else. You can study from home on your computer or if you’ve got a laptop, you can go anywhere. If you have any questions, then make use of the 24×7 support (that you should have insisted on for any technical study.) You have the ability to go back and re-cover all the learning modules as often as you need to. And of course, you won’t need to scribble any notes as the teaching is yours forever. Put simply: You save on money, time, hassle and avoid killing more trees.
IT has become amongst the most stimulating and innovative industries to be involved in today. Being up close and personal with technology is to be a part of the massive changes affecting everyone who lives in the 21st century. We’re at the dawn of starting to get to grips with how all this will mould and change our lives. The way we interact with the world will be significantly affected by technology and the web.
The money in IT isn’t to be sniffed at also - the income on average in the UK for a typical IT worker is noticeably more than the national average. Chances are you’ll make a whole lot more than you could reasonably hope to get in other industries. It’s no secret that there is a substantial UK-wide demand for professionally qualified IT workers. Also, as growth in the industry shows little sign of contracting, it appears this pattern will continue for a good while yet.
About the Author:
With 20 yrs experience, author Jason Kendall, battles for cheaper, superior multimedia training in the UK. To investigate
Comptia A+ Certification, visit LearningLolly
A+ Courses.
Tags: general, self help, college