A+

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OK, I am going to hold my hands up... I decided to go with a training provider to fine tune my A+ and N+ skills. I felt I knew the stuff, having worked in IT for a few years, but I needed some way to back up that assumption. I took a week off work, paid for the course and turned up on the Sunday afternoon as requested.

The course was Monday to Thursday for the A+, with one exam on the Wednesday evening and the other on the Thursday evening.

The N+ part of the course was Friday and Saturday with Sunday advertised as a Study day before the N+ exam.

What can I say? The food was the best I ever tasted on a course... by far. And the guys with me on the course? An absolutely great bunch of guys! Without them I would have gone home on Monday night...

The tutor? Not very good at all, I am afraid. I could say worse, but some of you reading this may become offended. He did not appear interested and I had to raise the issue with the company on a couple of occasions. In fact, some of us actually ended up assisting others, not that we are tutors you understand.

I am sure you will want to know what we were given in terms of training material? Well, we were given the Meyers AIO 6th (already got it) and their own ring-bound training folder. After a few days the training folder started to fall apart. The training folder was in effect a set of slides that the tutor didn't even go through in any order. Highlights were in red... imagine trying to read red highlights on pages printed in black and white.

I passed the A+ (2007) with quite good scores, and I really hoped the N+ would be better.

The tutor (the same guy) was certainly better than for the first few days,and he followed the training folder. The N+ book was the Meyers Passport one by the way.

Anyway, to cut a looong story short... I left at lunchtime yesterday. I thought I knew quite a bit about networks, and I probably could have passed; however, I decided to hang on to the voucher I have paid for as part of the course, do a bit more self study and take the exam locally. What I want to do is pass with a good score, knowing how I passed. If I had taken the exam this morning as was the Training Provider's plan I could have passed but I wouldn't have done myself justice.

Right... me n my little son are going swimming... catch you all later.

 

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Sounds like the course was bad, your probably right to leave and study on your own.

Well done for passing the A+

 

Thanks GBL.

I aim to take the N+ in a couple of weeks in Newark. I should pass, given my previous networking experience.

 

From your description of the experience, you probably want to lose the training provider but keep in touch with the other students. It sounds like the lot of you would make a great study group. If you all live relatively near each other, you could create an in-person study group that meets periodically to support each other's IT educational efforts. If distance is a problem, you could consider a virtual study group. We created the Lab Partners forum years ago with this idea in mind but it never really caught on. Perhaps this would be a good time to bring the concept out of the closet and dust it off. Just a thought.

 

Yep... and that's why we recommend people save their money and study on their own. Forums like these can give you the companionship and assistance offered by those "other students"... add that to some books, and you've got what you need!

 

Well even though the course wasn't that great at least you passed! thats a great feeling knowning that you actually understand the material without much of help. Good luck on the Network+!!

 

Guys,

Thanks for the comments.

I really wanted to use the course to measure up where I was in terms of being ready to take the exams. Reading the books is great but, if you read and re-read them, you can end up 'knowing' it without fully understanding it. I wanted to ensure I fully understood. I did anyway, as it happens...

So, Trip? How does the Lab Partner thing work? A certified member of the forum and one or more 'trainees' or different to that?

Thanks again.

John

 

Congrats Giddy on passing the A+ and good luck with the N+

 

Thanks... just trying to get myself registered for the N+ locally now. Spoke to my best mate, who works at a college in Newark. He is going to see if there are any dates available in about 2 weeks.

I am currently whiteboarding the OSI whilst taking the occasional peek at CF...

 

I think that all of the "lab partners" need to be CF members. They use the forum as a conduit for communications. Zimbo posted a pinned thread illustrating how an MCSA/MCSE lab partners lab would be set up:

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/thread9278.html

That establishes the parameters for the home lab of each member of the partnership. Back in the day, Phil, one of the founding members, posted a lab partners FAQ here:

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/thread758.html

That more or less describes how the lab partners concept works.

Probably, a good way to set this up is to give your lab partners course a unique title such as Network+ Lab and then number each lesson "Network+ Lab 01", "Network+ Lab 02", "Network+ Lab 03", and so on. Each lesson could be its own thread. The lesson could be set up in the first post in the thread and then discussion would occur between the partners on that lesson in that thread, including any problems, issues, suggestions, and help to other partners.

It would probably be good to define the number of lessons in a course. You could all be working from the same book and just use the chapters as lessons for ease of use.

I'm just shooting from the hip really. As I mentioned earlier, we've tried this out, but I'm not aware of a lab partnership that lasted until its logical conclusion. I think to make it work, all of the partners have to make a commitment to stay the course and make the virtual partnership an enduring part of their day-to-day lives. I think what's killed lab partnerships in the past is that people just got too busy and the partnership was the easiest thing to cut loose.

I think it would really work and the threads themselves could be useful for people, even months or years after the course has ended, to show them the entire lived learning process involved in studying for a certification. Perhaps the projects previously selected were too complicated or too involved. Maybe something more-or-less basic like the Network+ certification exam would be a good starting place.