Back to school.............

I'm just warning you to be careful about going to community college or tech schools for this. I can't speak for ITT-tech but I did have a bad experience with a "digital media" program at a local community college. Make sure you instructors know what they're doing and that they're really going to teach you what you need to know.

As for some advice from the field, it's hard for me to say because everyone's experience is different. The job market is pretty tight right now - hopefully it will pick up again before too long. I guess one piece of advice is not to pigeon-hole yourself into one specific type of work. Keep broadening your horizons and always be willing to learn.

I agree whole heartedly with what Megan said. In an industy where the technical environment changes so rapidly, you simply cannot afford to become complacent with the skills you have.

With regards to your question. If you are going to be freelancing or entering a company.

With freelancing remember one thing they call them clients because all of the other 4 letter words were taken. They can be infuriating; constantly asking for the idiotic, impossible or plain old ludicrous. However they pay your fees. One of the most important things about working for yourself in this area are your communication skills. You need to be able to convey in all communication you reliablity, intelligence etc.

Within a company. The big thing usually about working within a framework already set up by others is your need to conform to it (to a certain degree). There is more security to having a larger company pay your income.

I have completed a course at an institution which is not a university and at a university, I would have to say that on the whole the standard of education is usually better at university level. Never forget that whilst university can give you the skills on paper, nothing compares to learning on the job.

Finally, regardless of whatever work you find yourself in, never stop learning. The greatest gift an IT person can have I think is a burning passion for knowledge. The second being personality. If two people had roughly the same skillset, who would you hire / like to work with better ? The person who wouldn't say boo to their shadow, or the person who is outgoing and would benefit others with their company, sharing of knowledge etc...

I can't speak for ITT, but I am currently attending a junior college. Its horable. You don't learn sqat.

In the CGI and JavaScript classes, they teach you to cut & paste. Then people walk out of that class thinking they know CGI or Javascript, but I'm sure none of them could write a 'Hello World' script from scratch.

I took an intro to C++ class. That one they did teach how to program from scratch, but it went so horably slow that we never got into functions that weren't native to C. The teacher spent so much time catering to the idiots in the class that he didn't make it through the syllabus.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Quote: Originally posted by Mark Hensler
I took an intro to C++ class. That one they did teach how to program from scratch, but it went so horably slow that we never got into functions that weren't native to C. The teacher spent so much time catering to the idiots in the class that he didn't make it through the syllabus.

Sounds familiar. Really, they should tell people before they sign up for these things that you HAVE to be able to learn quickly and easily in this business. If you need someone to hold your hand through every step then you shouldn't be in IT.

What you should do is talk to the instructor. Ask a lot of questions. You want an instructor who has real world experience developing sites professionally. Ask for URLs of his/her work and where he/she hangs out online. Do you have a link to a course syllabus or summary of some kind? I could probably give you some ideas for questions to ask if I had more info about what exactly you're taking.

In the digital media course I took the instructor completely brushed off hand coding ("Again, you don't need to know HTML!"), spent half a day on tables in Dreamweaver before telling everyone to just use layers, could not develop lesson plans without a book to tell him what to do (even though the guy had been to teacher's college!), and tried to teach us stuff he didn't even know how to do himself. Big fat waste of time and money.

Im pretty much going to say what has already been said, but I am currently on a National Diploma course in Mulitimedia (in the UK), we do everything, and this course is great because we do everything, we also did some web stuff, when we did the web stuff I ended up teaching the group (I am completly serious).

Since I really want to go down the road of web design/development, I have been on other courses, including

- Marketing your website
This course was crap, I had to correct the tutor on several occasions because his methods were out of date.

- Selling On-Line
This one was ok, since it mainly dealt with the bank side of things, but they were still a little behind on the web side of things.

Also, I have been on a "webmaster" course, I went to one lecture because they told me I would be taught HTML. Yipee ! And this was labelled and as up-to-date course with major careeer oppurtunites (*excuse any typo's, it's late*).

So, do some major research on the course or whatever before commiting yourself to anything, the educations system here in the UK is behind, well behind with the technology of the internet.

My bad experience

I did a C/C++ course a few years ago, I was a bit naive as it was my first programming language and all, but once started I was shocked, This overpriced course had two tutors (one knew C/C++ backwards) the otehr straight from teachers college that knew nothing, but the method of teaching was the problem, it wasnt a classroom situation (tutor - pupils) it was done by CBT cd's which, well i cant really say what they are cause I'm sure this forum has a 'no bad word clause :)'

I admit to being a bad speller, but these CBT courses are filled with them (typos), to a point where some parts dont even make sense. the examples are filled with errors, I doubt they were ever checked or run. It would of been a challenge or nice to fault find the examples AFTER you knew a little about the language, but since you rarely had anytime to whip your nose just trying to make sense of it was bad enough. Since C is compiled I got really good at rebooting a crashed pc.

I finished the course but went on to use the tutorials, teach yourself C and C++ in 21 days (seperate tuts).

The tutors spent all the time helping the studenst whose first language wasnt english so all the rest of us (about 25) got left out, I got nothing from this course apart from gettting a cert. saying i completed the course, even thou I didnt know it. and ended up teaching the tutor how to do HTML

The CBT range isnt recommend, I even looked at the HTML one, copy and pasted some of the lessons code and validated it at 3org (forget the exact url), anyways it failed - badly.

good luck

Well thanks to all who have given thier input..

There was more that i want to post, but i didn't wanna overburden the first post so i will do it here.

The course at itt seems well worth the effort. It takes the whole web development from begging to end. it says students will learn computers from the inside out. learn java, cgi, c/c++, perl, GUI, of course html dhtml and other stuff im sure i have left out. you will also learn all the different platforms ie.linux-netware-windows/nt and dos batch file programing.

i could learn all this on my own, but i thought having an Associates degree behind my knowledge would give me some kind of edge. So would i be further ahead to go to school for this, i know many of the professional webmasters out there never stepped foot in a webmaster course. But i guess that was most likely before the career was actualy acknowledged.

And i thought of going to a university, but i dont want to study things that have nothing to do with web development(although that nice university sticker you get might change my mind lol jk).

ok i think i've rambled on long enough ill shut up now

laters,

The whole problem is that these things always sound good in the beginning. They make all kind of fancy promises, their instructors seem to have great qualifications etc. etc. but in reality they often aren't what they're cracked up to be. I'd still reccommend checking into things a little more thoroughly before you commit to it.

Well, When I was younger, well 3-4 years ago, I wanted to get jobs based on design, internet, computers.

Now that cause is nearly if not impossible. See, just about anyone that can use frontpage or dreamweaver can make a design business. So many people know how to use grpahics programs and html its unbeleiveable.

I would go to school for a IT Network manager course or something for Software/Hardware Admin, but design, I think from 2000 on, designing is mostly a hobby, other then the luckys that got a job in a big company.

This is my 600th post too.

Quote: The course at itt seems well worth the effort. It takes the whole web development from begging to end. it says students will learn computers from the inside out. learn java, cgi, c/c++, perl, GUI, of course html dhtml and other stuff im sure i have left out. you will also learn all the different platforms ie.linux-netware-windows/nt and dos batch file programing.

all this in "roughly a 2yr course"

I would seriously look at exactly what you'll be taught, 2 yrs would probably give you the basics of all that above, but by no means would you become a master at any. I'd say a few other things that might be on that list could be TCP/IP, networking, DOM, etc

Employers do like to see your cert, or dioploma (whatever you get from the end of it), It shows you can study, are willing to learn, not afraid of hard work ... and know a bit of everything so your a prime target that they can take you in and mould you to their ways.

Quote: Originally posted by Grandmaster
I would go to school for a IT Network manager course or something for Software/Hardware Admin, but design, I think from 2000 on, designing is mostly a hobby, other then the luckys that got a job in a big company.

And the people who have a good college diploma in graphic design. I'm finding that around here those are the ones getting most of the full-time design jobs (which is kind of unfortunate because I think a lot of them don't really know what they're doing when it comes to web). If you're not one of those you just have to be really really good to get a straight design job these days (and I'm talking a "real" full-time job with a company not freelance. That's a different story altogether).

Quote: This is my 600th post too.

Congrats!