Tony Brewer

A big congratulations goes out to Sarah who has landed a new tech job! She’s one of the top level network administrators for a research company that has offices in more than a dozen companies. Sarah has really impresses me, I remember when she was talking about going to school to learn tech stuff, I had not thought she would go through with it.

But she has - she’ applied herself, done tons of homework and is continuing with school even though she has landed a top notch job already - good for you Sarah!

For years i have satisfied my dreams of investing in my own education. A wise person once said that an education is one investment that can not be taken from you. A majority of my education the past few years has been from books, online materials and seminars. You don’t get college credits by reading books, but the knowledge gained can be more powerful than some of the courses you do get credit for.

The biggest cost for me is time, the time spent learning could be spent working and earning money, it could also be spent with the family, or relaxing, all valuable things to do in life, so the vast amount of time I spend at conferences and seminars costs much more than the admission fee. The time I spend reading forums and online manuals could be spent doing other things to earn money.

With so much out there that I want to learn, and with so many opportunities to earn, it’s tough to decide sometime where to invest the time.

Of course education is my favorite investment with time or money.

I have used so many tools for learning, books, videos, classes, conferences, audio books, webinars, you name it. I must say that my favorite is webinars. I have enjoyed the convenience of online learning, but the webinars that I have joined seem to provide a slicker look and feel that is more conducive to learning for me.

Of course a lot of that has to do with the speaker(s) and the material as well, but all in all the webcam conferences seem to get more of my attention and keep a faster pace for learning, I look forward to more people and schools offering first rate webinars via webcam. Of course with some grueling video editing many of the online video courses could become faster paced and more my style.

I’ve also really enjoyed the classes that MIT is offering via their open courseware project.