Investing in ongoing Skills Training / Development.

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learning “Is it a school day tomorrow?”

I get this question almost every day from my kids. Doesn’t matter if it’s from my kindergarten aged twins or my “seasoned veteran” son who’s in grade 2. It’s on their minds as something they have to do – their task that occupies part of their day. So far – every time when I inquire why they are asking – the stock response is “just curious – I just want to know”.

So far – they love going to school. Hopefully that won’t change - learning and working with their friends on tasks they are given as part of the learning process. They get to take these skills, re-apply them again and again in different situations in order to reinforce what they have learned throughout the day. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Skills development and lifelong learning.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

When was the last time you took time to do some learning and investment in personal and technical development in your regular day to day tasks? This is something that is on top of everything else we have to do – it can be very time consuming – but a necessary evil.  Let me help you out a bit with this.

I wanted to share a resource that I’ve known about for a while, but haven’t made the time to use on a regular basis. It’s an “extension” of the TechNet Virtual Lab site called  Express Virtual Labs. Maybe you don’t have the time for a multi-part in depth look at technology, but you need to get up to speed quickly on the basics in order to get to the next step. You don’t have the time to invest in setting up a lab or scenario for a technology you KNOW will make my life easier at work. TechNet Virtual Labs (regular or express) takes that barrier out of the equation.

  • Virtually no hardware requirements (ok, you need a client system)
  • A reserved chunk of time for you on a sandbox virtual environment
  • Structured steps for lab exercises all laid out for you in a downloadable format
  • You can pick and choose what you would like to try

vlabs express All you have to do is set aside some time at work or at home to try them out and make an investment in your skills development. I mentioned the new grouping called “Express format” – something that is more introductory based in a wide range of technologies -  it should hopefully make it even easier to start the small steps required to make that investment.

Take a moment. Ask yourself - “is it a school day tomorrow"?

if it’s not, do yourself a favour and schedule a block of time to make it one – sooner, rather then later.

……you’ll thank yourself for it.

Rick
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