Leeoakley

Id advise a couple of days 121 training. You will get more from the session based on your current exp and it wont be way off, in terms of price, compared to an official 5 day CCNA.

The issue is the qualification.....and what its supposed to show. "The whole experience was a shambles and I'm glad it's over and done with." Can I ask if you are now fully employed in a role that links to the NVQ you took? Although doing the NVQ is usually a pain, its great if you need to sit in an interview and say I have experience. Training varies across providers, not great.

School still pays as normal the wage you set. After 6 months (i think) you can claim £1500 back as a one off. Does that make sense?

You can still get the £1500. We did last year and we are this year as well.

https://i7lp.integral7.com/durango/do/pr/prSearch?ownername=apple This work? or google: Apple Certified Professionals Registry

Does this help? https://i7lp.integral7.com/durango/do/pr/prSearchResult Hopefully the linked search works.

You need to come up with some short punchy sessions. Think of what the users will face: Sounds stupid, but start from where the users will begin. What I mean by that is that I'm a user at your school, I arrive in the morning and fire up my PC......what do I do? Just come up with a brief overview (30mins tops) that you can cover on mass and produce some handouts. From here on in its about creating a set of courses that cover the main areas of Office 365, and the apps within it. Think carefully about what you want the staff to be doing with the product and what areas of "best practice" you want the staff to adhere to. For the follow on sessions get the staff in front of a computer and guide them through the content with you demoing on a whiteboard. If this is the first time you have done this, it will be as much a test for you, as training for the staff. Just keep it light hearted and get everyone working on the product. Ditch any thoughts of PowerPoint for the hands on sessions, you will bore the hell out of everyone (and probably yourself). Where possible, try to group the staff so you don't have huge ability gaps within a class. This will help keep your tempo on the sessions at an even pace. I have a load of outlines for training in office365, If it will help I can email these to you. May give you a starting point I hope this is the kind of thing you are looking for? GOOD LUCK!!!

If you are starting up a business you might also be able to access a business start up grant. Have a look at your local councils website. If your not sure or cant find it let me know and i will have a look for you.

Mark, It will be tight on getting you all the MCSA courses for £1500. would it be worth looking at "other" type of qualifications as well. It sounds like you tech skills are solid as you mentioned you could self study for these. There are other vendor specific qualifications: CCNA, VCP etc, As well as management qualifications PRINCE2, ITIL etc. Just a thought! Lee

Yeah they all will be aware of it. the trick will be getting the most bang for your £1500. Do you know what exams you are looking to pass.

What grant is it Mark? Do you have a link. If we cant help, we might be able to point you in the right direction, so you get the most for your grant Lee

@mikeyd101 - Unfortunately there is no single place to get the info you are talking about. You will need to find a number of sources MS press books, the online Microsoft virtual labs and academy and seek out others who have taken the exams. The exams are created with a "view" that you have real world exp that will enable you with training and/or self study to take the exams. Exam 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 this is the 410 exam page. The skills measured should help give you some structure to your studying so that you can at least formulate a plan of attack Repeat for each exam you're after.

Firstly do you already have any qualifications? Secondly, there are loads of places in London to take exams. If you are stuck PM me and i will send you a list.

Unfortunately with very little experience you may well struggle to get a tech job, when competing against other candidates with "hit the floor running" skills. The only other solution would be to supplement your income as an apprentice, by working weekends. Its a tough industry to break in to and the only real solution is to get experience, work hard and be committed. What you have to keep in mind, is that its for most people, the college qualification wont really prepare a person for what they walk in to, in an IT role and wont make your CV stand out at all. I'm sure the technicians on here will vouch for that, or shoot me down in a ball of fiery forum posts. The thing with your supermarket role is that: 1) Its not what imagine you want to be doing long term (hence the post). 2) Although £8 an hour seems like a lot now, long term its not a terrific salary. You may be one of the lucky few who fall on their feet and land a job, but the odds of that happening wont be nearly as high compared to you having a years worth of real exp. Its all about the CV and interview- At interview; You will be able to talk more about your experiences in IT in a confident way, as well troubleshoot technical tests in the interview more efficiently. Sorry that there is no magic answer that will get you a job. Lee

If your looking at instructor led training, they often run a number of those topics as individual courses. This normally means its expensive! How complicated does you site need to be? Have you mapped out what you want the site to be capable of doing? and what could be used to achieve it? Lee

I don't think you can go far wrong with the Microsoft qualifications to start with. Realistically, from a CV perspective, you would ideally want to eventually have a mix of "management" and "tech" qualifications. If you're going to put a proposal together, you should look at putting forward a 2-3 year plan for your head. Couple of reasons for this; it will show that you are planning your development for a long term stay at the school (never a bad thing if they are investing in you), as well as potentially helping to securing future training budgets for the next 2-3 years. If you want any help putting something together drop me a message, I've done loads of these over the years

They have the same username and password?

If you are feeling left out i can send you something

You can also do a combined 5 day course covering ICND 1&2. The cheapest way to receive this type of training (per person), if you just want to get the training in and sorted, is to ping an email out to the other local schools/colleges in the area. If they also have an interest, Group as many techs together as possible (I wouldn't advise more than 10) an split the cost of an onsite course. You can easily run this type of training out of one of the school IT/conference rooms. It will cost you a bit of time in trying to organise it, but will save on the wallet. Alternatively you can try the local colleges/universities, but then you usually looking at a course spread over a few months. Hope this helps. Lee

good luck and get nagging!

Before you spend time setting it all up, I'd trial it. Get an intro video, create your first sample email send it out and use a bit of software to monitor just how many viewers you get. Its likely to only be a small percentage of staff (if, im wrong here, i'll apologise in advance). "I know we can get in a Smart trainer but they're expensive and most of the teachers will have forgotten what they'd heard about within a week! At least with short videos they can see them several times and refer back to them in the future." If the teaching staff struggle to retain info from a physical course, based of my experiences in the training industry, they aren't likely to pick an awful lot up from a video, let alone put the training in to action. Possible solutions: Work with those who are complaining first (as they want to know more) Next door neighbor syndrome - If you're going to invest time, you should try and pull in as many staff as you can. Quite simply, if you can get a few teachers embrace the interactive boards and start to really excel in a more in interactive/blended approach, you'll have more success. The other teaching staff will find out about it and want to know more. This changes the motive for training/learning entirely, from training for the sake of it, trough to training to be as good at something as their peers. No one likes to be bottom of the class The approach I'm about to suggest, will take you more up front time but its better than you wasting your time on a project that is potentially doomed to failure. Work with a select number of the teaching staff to develop some lessons (just a few). Be careful how you pitch the idea, it has to sound easy, run through that you will be investing your (or someones) time in to making this as painless as possible for the teacher(s) in question. Teach them on the job, whilst developing material with them so that they learn, without any pressure, in the subject they teach. The other thing is to pick your teachers wisely. People will naturally come up with an excuse to not do something, for example - Head of IT, is perhaps not the right evangelist, not because of their knowledge, not because the wouldn't pick it up quickly, but because of the subject they teach. The teaching staff will expect "insert name here" to do great interactive lessons because they are an IT teacher. So others will simply think, that's because x is good at IT! I would also look to get teachers from different departments if possible and not just work with one department. After this you have to see what happens, but i reckon your training vids and any extra support will go down far better! If its allowed, you could always film a teacher at your school using the lessons you have helped create, to introduce what can be done. Might be a nice project for a School film/media club to get involved with. As for vids, i will drop an email a colleague for you and see if there are any that are especially good. Sorry for the essay!

The problem is, even if you invest time and effort in to "forcing"a video out, people can still just ignore it and say they have watched the video. Why not use one of the many online video hosts and make everyone take a survey/test to show that they have both watched and understood the video, this would both prove attendance and also identify that users actually understood the content. If there are commonly misunderstood areas, you can then support users further with additional videos/fact sheets to help clear things up.

Make sure you look in to the grants that are available.

I'd personally go Microsoft, its on pretty much every tech job spec i ever see. MCSE: Server Infrastructure | Microsoft MCSE: Desktop Infrastructure | Microsoft You should look in to exams 410,411 and 412 first. These grant you the MCSA status, which can then be added to to give you a grander title "You could look at getting FITS, ITIL or MOF - best/good practice certs." this is the other thing you should look in to as it brings a whole new side to your IT game from a CV perspective. If your looking purely to boost your CV, ITIL foundation would be a good shout. As for training locally, the higher up you go in terms of qualifications (the A+ would be considered entry level). Generally the further away you have to look (especially if price is a key factor). You might also want to look at online learning, or a combo of hands on + online training to get you to a point to take your exams. Be careful as some qualifications do require you sit an official course before sitting an exam. If your not sure post up on here and someone will help.

CompTIA A+ Training Course | CompTIA A+ Classes | Learn CompTIA A+ CompTIA A+ Certification: Accelerated for All 2012 Exam Objectives - Training course catalogue - QA Or you should find if you google A+ London a load of colleges will also run courses for you. The main thing to consider would be if the A+ or Microsoft courses would be better for your personal progression.