Leeoakley

There are loads of courses in London for this type of training. Do you need the A+ for a reason? (it reads like your an experienced technician)

You can't go wrong setting up a test environment (use hyper V) and use as many online tutorials as you can to work through the product. Can you save up the 2hrs and take larger blocks of time off (half days)?

I hope i'm correct on this and i will get someone to clarify..... If using the third party tool above: You aren't trying to control the chromebook as a unit (or so i believe) as you will be "streaming" the apps/workspace the individuals needs and control their profiles centrally, basically allowing your staff/pupils to access their workspace anywhere.

2X Client for Desktop PCs, Mobiles, Tablets & Social Networks Is a third party tool worth looking at? I've linked one of many. Will depend on you infrastructure, but way be worth considering. Lee

You can get a compressor and Airbrush, the sort used for spaying cars etc. for between £35-£50 on ebay. These should be fine for blowing the rubbish out of a PC.

You may also want to have a look at the Microsoft equivalent. If you have a local MS academy they might be able to help. Lee

"Once I've got an idea, I'll start knocking up a basic training package (Presentations, crib sheets, videos, etc) and pop it on here for people to use/hand out/print out and make a fort with. It might save repeat calls/jobs, it might educate people a bit, you never know." I would go about this a completely different way...... From experience I would only develop presentations, cribs and vids as something to act as a reference after you have trained a group or individual user. Try not to develop any training from how you would like to learn the content, but try to think of this from your day to day experience in dealing with your end users. The most common mistake when developing something like this is to think that the staff will eagerly take away some content and use any form of resource (even Google) in an attempt to clarify something you have developed and for whatever reason they don't understand. You will need to deliver sessions to the staff face to face to get the best out of any training that you develop, as you are dealing with a mixed group of people, each with different personalities and ways of learning. For example if someone doesn't like to ask questions, is shy or simply doesn't want to look "stupid" in front of the group, you need to pick this up. Give each of the delegates a PC and let them get hands on and make mistakes. Try to keep the groups small, and target different areas they need training in to do their jobs both quicker and smarter and keep the sessions short. The training has to be relevant from the off or you will be fighting an up hill battle. How you deliver the training is massively important, be self critical, you aren't their tech support but their trainer for the slot. These are two very different things. keep things fun and give them ownership of what they are doing, for example: let them name folders if you are teaching them about saving work correctly or write about their pet dog Mimi, in a word training session. Basically don't over do the materials and don't bother reinventing the wheel. Use resources that can be found online to support what you deliver and concentrate on learning/planning how you will deliver this face to face. There is a real art to training and this may well be more of an exercise in developing your skills than anything else. one more thing; training users in notoriously difficult, so get them to fill out an anonymous feedback sheets at the end of each session, this will be great for you to see how you getting on. GOOD LUCK!

Apprentice is seriously worth considering. Great value for the kind of jobs you are looking to fill.

Generally, brain dumps are a list of Q&A's that commonly appear on the exams. Technical training generally gives you skills, that you can take away and use when administering your environment. This should also give you the skill/ability to answer the MCSE questions, when combined with your working knowledge and self study. Back to helping you with what you will need: In order to top up your skills you would need to look at the qualifications you require (I'm assuming you'd be after the server qualification) Exam Numbers 410, 411, 412, 413, 414 Areas of consideration: This is on top of all the standard server admin, active directory knowledge plus changes. Hyper V Powershell WDS SCCM RDS There are other little area that you will pick up on as well. I would advise you print/save all of the content and work your way through and highlight areas you are both strong and weak in, in terms of what you already know. Then come back to us for more advice...... I hope this helps? Lee

You are about to open a can of worms ITIL or FITS..... You will get all sorts of answers on this one,CyberNerd has pretty much nailed one side of the coin. On the other side.... FITS, if your not already ITIL qualified, is heavily tailored to the environment you work in. From a training perspective (if your interested in the relevance of the training) the FITS course will only have delegates from the education sector. What you discuss both with delegates and the trainer, will have a single focus. You will need to have a think about what you need as an individual, an IT team (which is also very important) and a school. Although I agree to some extent, this may not be obvious for younger or less experienced team members. It might be worth PMing someone like Grumbledook, who I'm sure will be happy to discuss these options with you. Initially, have a think about what are you trying to achieve.

Hi Gongalong, Kent council run courses for schools using QA. It quite a good price... http://www.eiskent.co.uk/default.cfm?cat=training&courseid=E446&tcid=6

Hi Ful56, If you are looking for MOC, then drop me a list of the official courses or exams you are looking at sitting and I will pop you over some details of a few providers in London. Regards, Lee

Hi All, We have been asked to put on a WS2008R2 training course in Bristol for a group of schools. If anyone else is interested let me know. Lee

What sort of courses are you looking for: Official Mac Training? A deployment & intergration with active directory course? Lee

I work in sales and I certainly don't want to touch anyone's base

Just a quick suggestion. Can I just state clearly we don't deliver this type of training, so am not looking to pitch for business. In the past i have worked with The IT Academy in york, and know that a couple of schools on edugeek have sat their MCITP training with him. Looking at your pricing it may be worth dropping him a line or email, just to see. 24k (minimum) for the 6 of you seems like quite a chunk of cash for the courses. His details are: Andrew Bettany MCT, MCSE, MCITP IT Academy Manager University of York IT Academy Research and Enterprise Innovation Centre York Science Park York YO10 5DG Work: +44(0) 1904 567983 Mobile:+44(0) 791 9293094 [NEW]

Hello All, Just a bit of an update this course has now been scheduled for the 3-4 May and will be running from Guthlaxton College. Anyone wanting pricing, course outlines or any further information, please email me on [email protected]. Other News We have now moved in to our new training facility and are looking for an Edugeek User to come try us out and report back to the edugeek community. We are offering one of you the opportunity to come and sit both our Windows Server 2008R2: Server Administration & Active Directory courses FREE OF CHARGE! If you would be interested please send me an email, we will be picking a winner randomly on the 20th April. Please Note that we will only accept one application per person, just in case any of you are feeling cheeky! Please send emails to [email protected] with the subject EDUGEEK REPORT. Kind Regards, Lee

Where abouts are you based? Lee

Thanks Tony! @Beswick - We generally have to create a network of schools in a new area but we also have access to a great mailing list. We also find that a lot of schools IT Managers go to network meetings and link up with surrounding schools. This is generally a good way of talking about this kind of thing and finding out what’s of interest. We also call around schools but again we don’t like to do this too heavily as we know what you think of being pestered We currently have the WDS previously mentioned and there are also the rumblings of VMware courses running in Nottingham. If you want to have a chat about Powershell feel free to call me, more than happy to advertise something. There are a couple of issues that can arise when delivering a Powershell training course and the generally are linked to having a mixed programming experience within a training group. But again, if you want to have a natter about this I can explain in more detail how to prevent a poor delivery. Basically we can put courses on pretty much anywhere, supplying full kit and in pretty much any subject area. Lee

Joe....you just made me blush! Thanks for all the great feedback everyone. "Can anyone who's been there recently confirm that Alan still has a 'flat top'. " I have to look at the flat top almost every day of the week and I can confirm it is still.....very flat! Jon: Not sure if I can offer advice on the edugeek forum about a product we offer, but as this may be useful I will cross my fingers and hope I don't get a slap on the wrists. If travel is an issue: we deliver a large number of "satellite" courses throughout the UK for groups of schools. For example; we are running a Windows Server 2008 course for a group of schools in Bristol this half term from a school in the city centre. We have some interest in WDS from schools in your area. If I had 4-5 interested technical staff we could deliver the course with you and pricing would be similar, if not better than that quoted on the eshot. Basically the more interests we have the lower the price becomes (up to a maximum of 10 delegates). This way we come to you and local schools benefit from a reduced cost of the training and travel. Let me know if you want to discuss this further. Once again, thanks for the feedback. Lee 01905 726222 [email protected]

It's the last day of the first 5 days of (training outlines above). The course is full, with 10 technical staff on both courses from schools running from Somerset down to Plymouth. We have had and overflow of interest and so are planning to put another set of the same courses, Dates: Feb 27th-Mar 2nd. I will get some of the delegates lo let you know how they got on! Following this we will also be delivering courses around the following topics: WS2008 R2: Active Directory & Group Policy Exchange 2010 Hyper V Powershell Vsphere Let me know if there is an interest. Lee

depending on where you are, I believe Gaia technologies (Bangor) open up for testing once a week. Lee

Hello All, We are running some courses in Exeter in conjunction with Devon Council for schools infastructure teams in the SW. I have attached the outlines for the course and have included details below. Courses Windows 7: Desktop support Windows Server 2008R2: Server Administration Windows7desktopsupport - 2 days.pdf Windows 2008R2ServerAdministration 3 day.pdf Date: 17- 21 October Cost: £600pp The aim is to create a community of schools that come together for training as a collective, ensuring they get top quality training at a great rate. If you want further information or would like to book a place drop me an email [email protected] or call me on 01905 726222. If you have interests outside of the above (for example Exchange 2010, SharePoint, vSphere) let me know and I will see if there is a similar interest through the schools already attending. Regards, Lee

Cybernerd, Try Andy from Virtusolve already on this thread, they are great bunch of lads and should be able to run you through things. i have his number somewhere if its of use.

How are you identifying existing training needs? The core of the training solution is based on the preparation of training/workshops. If I were you I would look at a number of factors before you even look at the post implementation of training. Have you (or the company you are using) created a set of outlined that identify realistic learning objectives over the training sessions? You need to relate this information in to a TNA. This should enable you to effectively map out what people need and ensure that 1) they aren't bored, and 2) you group the staff into similar levels of ability or curriculum needs. As for the review: As you are running two sessions you could ask each delegate to produce some materials for the running of the second session. I would then also set review dates where you could evaluate progress as well as resolve any further issues. Another area that we have always found to work well with staff is to identify a set of "champions". Ultimately the learning of a product is a waste of time without a high level of buy in. Using peers to enthuse staff will only help the implementation element. A face to face meeting with you signing off areas of achievement would be useful but you may find this very time consuming. Not sure if this helps. Lee