Which AWS training tools offer the most direct, effective, and educationally sound routes to Cloud Computing administration success?
Amazon’s AWS is currently the clear leader of the cloud platform industry pack. That means most public cloud deployments are likely happening using AWS resources.
It also means that even experienced system administrators and DevOps teams are going to need to pick up the skills necessary to build infrastructure that’s both reliable and secure. For most professionals, earning AWS certifications offers the greatest confidence that they do, in fact, have those skills.
So what is the best approach to AWS training?
AWS training: what’s out there
Let’s explore some alternatives.
There is a world of useful material freely available online – both through Amazon’s in-house AWS training documentation and other sources like technical support forums. However, while these resources can cover a dizzying range of both theoretical and practical scenarios, not everyone has the time to plow through hundreds of pages looking for just the information he needs right now. Nor is everyone built to effectively absorb tightly packed text-based information.
How about taking one of those intense live classroom or virtual corporate training courses? For some, that may indeed be the perfect solution. But these events are usually very expensive – often thousands of dollars per participant – and some people will find it difficult to internalize and properly absorb the torrent of information that flows through the course’s two or three action-packed days.
This is particularly true for the thousands of companies we encounter at Cloud Academy who use our solution to save money over expensive offline courses, where employees are trained for a few days but don’t have time to dig deeper into individual topics. Most importantly: the knowledge they do pick up usually becomes obsolete almost immediately. All of this can be solved through a continuous training approach in which every month brings additional AWS training resources.
But more than that, the things a person is taught under relatively artificial conditions can sometimes be hard to apply to the real-world problems he or she might encounter days and months later. Will your AWS training experience have much to offer you in the early morning hours as you try to troubleshoot whatever it was that brought the private tier of your web service down? How easy will it be to apply what you’ve learned when theory comes face to face with reality?
Ideally, you might want to look for AWS training solutions that will remain available 24/7, long after your first exposure. Because complex problems can come up without warning, you’d like to be able to access not just your notes, but the original video lectures and study materials at any time and from any device. And you’d like that material to be easy to find and access.
Don’t ignore the basics of educational theory
The results of solid research into the way people learn new skills are not hard to find. To increase the chances of successful outcomes, you should look for curriculum content that incorporates core pedagogical elements, including:
- Instructional Design. The overall structure of the course material should be arranged and divided in ways that enhance access and clarity of purpose.
- Advance Organizers. New material and tasks should incorporate abstractions of knowledge the student has previously mastered.
- Visual Models. Create diagrams and detailed tables of contents to offer alternative cognitive approaches.
- Tutorials. Provide hands-on access to the tools being studied.
- Self-Assessment. Allow students to practice, absorb, and track their mastery of the material they’re studying.
- Simulation. Bring dry details to life in scenarios that closely match real-life projects.
- Multiple Instructional Strategies. Present concepts in more than one medium and style to accommodate students of varying academic strengths.
AWS Training at Cloud Academy
Cloud Academy has done a great job building an AWS training experience that fits pretty much all of those educational ideals.
By following our video lectures with practical hands-on labs or quizzes, you’ll encounter concepts you’ve already met, but from new and different perspectives.
When you move from topic to topic, you will apply ideas that, until now, might have seemed a bit abstract. Through it all, you will find yourself becoming more and more comfortable with the Amazon cloud.
Of course, all of our courses and labs are always available and easily found online whenever you need them. Whether you choose to drill down through Learning Paths or Courses menu, you’ll quickly find yourself navigating well-defined links to specific skills.
Because our educational model can leverage the scale of the Internet itself, it’s available to you and your team for a tiny fraction of the cost of live corporate training. And – because we regularly add new courses, new labs, and new quizzes, it’s a resource that not only stays with you but grows along with Cloud Computing itself.
Try it yourself:
AWS training with video courses
