I know that in our business staying ahead of the curve with new technology can be a frustrating process. Because we have to acquire new knowledge in the fastest way possible; we attend classes at our friendly neighborhood training center, but since course development lags behind the release of the product, we are sometimes forced to take a class that is still in a beta release.
Now for those of you that are a little rusty on your Greek, remember that ‘beta’ means ‘the labs don’t work’. Okay I did tighten things up on the translation, but you get the idea.
Don’t get me wrong, most of the labs do work after a fashion, but you have to have a little patience. As a matter of fact, let the instructor get the entire lecture out of the way and then as a class dig into the labs and see what you can do to fix them. I know this sounds like a chore, but remember in the ‘real world’ things don’t always go right and believe me, you will learn and retain a lot more if you do things for yourself.
As an example, last week I attended a class on the Hyper-V component of Server 2008 and from the beginning nothing worked as advertised. We were given the choice of going back home or staying around and trying to figure out where the problems were. Everyone in the class stayed and by the end of the 4 days we had two different ways of presenting the labs to future students. So I not only found out how to teach some of the upcoming Hyper-V classes, but have a much better understanding of how Hyper-V and VMM work (and how to fix them if they don’t). Thanks Bob and all that attended the class in Minnesota!
So the moral to this story is, even if you have to go to a beta class to get the training you need, use the class to its upmost; be patient, participate in the discussions, and have fun.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
