Originally posted by eskimo2
Cool; thanks. What’s your training/education? What beginning level class, book or web-based guide do you think has helped you the most (or would help me the most). Right now we have a windows 2000 server that’s due to be replaced soon. It handles our email, grade books, accounts, hosts the website… everything. My school is 430 kids and about 30 staff and about 100 PCs. We have a parent volunteer IT guy who does all of the tricky stuff. I add new accounts, change passwords, administrate and make the website and an intranet, fix simple problems when things go down, etc. I have no formal IT training. If I wanted to learn more, but not go back to school full time and become a real IT guy, what should I do?
Well I have a Associate in Electronics and have went to many Novell and Windows courses.
I finally got our school system to create a training budget about 7 years ago so I normally get to pick 1 class a year to take. But most of the Novell classes I need are a week long and cost over $1800 not including room and food.
I'm still waiting to hear if I can go to Ivy Tech for a year long Cisco router class. I've had the 1 week basic training coarse but it only showed me I didn't know anything.
I think it all comes down to money. If they can afford to send you to short classes (1 day to a week) then I would start there and start building up on things you need to know then later you can branch out to things you want to know.
If money is a problem then I would buy a book Windows Servers and see if you can get a spare computer that you can practice on. Use it to build and rebuild the server software and all it's components. If you destroy it...who cares it's a spare that isn't connected to the main network.
I currently have a test network with a Cisco 1721 router and 3 old Novell Servers that I load all new patches and software on before I put in on our live network that way I can see what it is going to screw up.
Plus I can try out tweaks or new configurations without hurting anything.
