The Top 5 Learning Resources to Brush Up on Your Skills This Summer

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Summer is a great time of year.   The weather is nice, the sun shines, there’s no snow to shovel or try to drive through.  It’s also a time of year when the traffic on the roads gets a little lighter and the office is a less busy.  You might even get the chance to leave a few hours early on a Friday and beat traffic getting to the cottage.

During this time, if you’re still trekking into the office every day, it’s also a great opportunity to do some of that training and skills development that keeps getting pushed out by some other fire drill or 911 that’s landed on your desk.

Your office probably isn’t a complete ghost town and you still have to do a decent amount of work, so to help I’ve put together what I think are the top 5 learning resources you should check out this summer to help sharpen your skills and set you up well for the rest of the year.

1. Take Free Online Training – Microsoft Virtual Academy has some great courses on the Private Cloud, SQL Server 2012 and Deploying Windows 7 (to name a few).  You can learn at your own pace (even sitting poolside) with this modular training approach.

2. Evaluate and Test New Products with Virtual Labs – try out the latest and greatest without setup or install.  A great way to quickly get hands on with guided labs on topics like Private Cloud.

3. Microsoft trial software – Great for evaluation and getting you up to speed on the newest products.  Deploy in your test environment and see what’s possible.  We just put out the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate and our Private Cloud release came out just a couple of months ago with System Center 2012. 

4. Certification – Want to show your current or a perspective company that you have the skills it takes to be that credible technical expert?  Consider becoming a Microsoft Certified Professional.  There are a lot of different technology areas to choose from like Windows Client or the newly released Private Cloud Certificaiton.

5. Join The Conversation with our LinkedIn Groups – not only is this a great way to stay up to speed on new training we might be offering, but you can also connect with the community and your peers to find out what else is going on.  We have  two groups that you can join today.  The Canadian IT Professional Connection and AlignIT for Infrastructure and Development Managers.

Enjoy the weather and happy learning!

Chris