Bachelor Of Information Technology

Now I don't want to hear the usual rant about no IT jobs anymore because that's crap.

You guys that work in the IT field (Network Admins in particular), what study have you untertaken so far?

How valuable are cisco courses, how much are they, how often they run?

Any good info, or suggestions welcome, anyone dribbles shit in this thread and i'll teach them how to kiss their own asshole.

Reaps - try this site - www.ola.edu.au

Handy option for those of us who want to study part-time (especially when you're working full-time).

I've enrolled in the Batchelor of Applied Sciences (Information Technology) through this site which is with RMIT.

Just suggesting it to you considering your current employment, and the possibility of being moved around (how long have you got left, BTW?)

I had no qualifications when i got my job!!

So i think there all pointless :P

Xaine

Discharge is 19 Dec

im doing a cisco course at the moment...

http://cisco.netacad.net

very well structered course..

I personally favour the TAFE courses over Higher Education.

It teaches you pratical knowledge, which you can apply straight away in your IT job. Higher Ed on the other hand, is more about teaching you about how things work, and the theory behind it all.
Plus, TAFE doesnt take as long which is a bonus. The other good thing about TAFE is that you can then go onto Higher Ed if you want, and you get credit for the TAFE work you have done.

The other things to study that can be very important is the certification courses, be they for CISCO, Microsoft etc etc.

I am currently working in a Sys Admin posistion, and have found that the Bachelor would not/will not help me there. I have almost finished the Diploma in Network Engineering (highly recommended course), and have some certs in Lotus Notes.

my 2c +GST

gl Reaps in whatever you chose

Cisco is boring, but easy.

Well from my opionion the Bachelor of IT at NTU (at least first year) Teaches you how to pass the exams not much else :cry:

What CPL said is true.

I've gone to college and didn't learn much about things currently being required of work. TAFE will teach you the more important things to get the job done properly and efficiently. You don't get the degree, but you can get the job done just as well. And you can always get the degree later when you get practical credits.

I say if you spend good money on getting CCNA (CISCO Certified Network Administrator) and CCNE (CISCO Certified Network Engineer), you'll get into the IT much faster and easier. Getting the CCNE is tougher though but you can work your way to it.

My Suggestion:
Do an accounting degree. Get recognized as CPA
Then Make IT a secondary skill that will compliment your CPA (Programming). Once ya get that, you could end up as my boss.

Well I have $4000 (not my money) that I can spend on doing any courses up to an advanced diploma,

Anyone know where I can find some information on Cisco courses.

You can't be serious, surely the bachelor of IT would give me some sort of an edge, otherwise why would so many people waste three years of their lives in training that gets you fuck all?

I like networking, I am ok at it so far but don't know the REAL technical side of it, though I am able to fix any network I have yet encoumtered problems on.

Any ideas where I should start, I wanna get a decent job as soon as possible, though I'm sure we all do.

Employers look more for people with experience in the field over theoretical knowledge attained at Uni. Tafe tends to provide more practical knowledge.

I'm in the 3rd year of the Bachelor of IT at NTU.

There is nothing that I have learned in that course that applies to the work I am currently doing (IT Manager at an engineering company up here - ie, combination network engineer / manager / computer tech / consultant).

However, the fact that I'm going to have a Bachelor soon means that I immediately qualify for loads of positions that I wouldn't qualify for without it.

That bit of paper gets you the interview, after that, you're on your own. But you need that bit of paper to get the interview, otherwise you get left behind for most jobs.

Quote from Sa' Martok:
Employers look more for people with experience in the field over theoretical knowledge attained at Uni. Tafe tends to provide more practical knowledge.

What's "practical" changes pretty quickly. Five years ago, C++ was the practical language, Java was a toy. Now Java is the in-thing.

The same is true of any category of technology produced by any company, no matter how dominant they seem today (cf: IBM).

The point of learning theory is that the theory does not change (the mathematics doesn't); or at least it changes very slowly. Discrete mathematics is not going to be swept aside by Naughty Mathematics 2005. It will remain the same, on all platforms, for all time.

Theory gives you an insight into the working of computers, programs and networks that practical experience might give you after many years of embarassing f*ckups. If you knew why it was so before you tooled around, you wouldn't make the same mistakes that have been made thousands of times before.

If you are serious about a longterm career in networking, programming and computers, then I recommend that you bite the damn bullet and do a proper computer science degree. Any university will teach you the Language of the Month alongside the mathematics and computer science principles that make it all work.

Look, before I did computer science I had the whole "just teach me the practical, p*ss off with the useless theory" attitude. I was dead wrong. The theory is essential to deep understanding of computers. Trust me.

tafe is a waste of time go straight to uni if you can, trust me i have been there for four years and they fuck you around. well in brisbane any way.. i'm saving for a private institution because i hate waiting 4 years for something i can get in 1 or 2

One of my friends went with a private training firm who train you in IT and part of the deal is they guarantee a job for two years or something like that. That's probably the best way to go but it costs a fair bit (although less than uni).

I have nearly completed certII of info technolodgy at CDU and i am enroled to do cert4(Client support) at cas full time next year.

I was told by my lecturer that cert4 has the cisco course included and once you finish u get a certificate from cisco training people on top of your cert4 Qulification. And it only takes 1 semester full time to complete it.

As far as i am aware your have to do cert2 and cert4 to be able to do the dimploma which is another 12months study after those two. The Dimploma at the moment is classed as tafe and you do not have to pay the big hex thing at the moment.

It might be the same as the TAFE I went to, they included the first semster of the CCNA in the course, but there are 4 semesters in total plus a final exam.

Reaper if you havent enrolled yet, listen to this.

If you do the Diploma of Network Engineering - 1 year. It then means you only have to do 2 years of the 3 year BIT.. and you dont need to do the common subjects and you also end up saving about 10 grand... so do the Diploma, its quite interesting and very very practical.

Nah I haven't enrolled yet, as far as I'm aware I dont think you have to do the cert 4 and I'm not really interested.

Diploma of network engineering aye, thats the field I'm looking at so I'll have to look further into it.

next yeha i waann do cert 2 and 4
but i heard they focus on databases a fair bit
and they really give me the shits

Yeah cert2 and 4 has database included and it does really suck!!!! I am doing database at the moment.

But you have to take the good with the bad. The rest of it is pretty easy for cert2.

well im in my cert4 class now.. and yes the cisco course comes free with cert 4 .. and no knight its not that much databaseing
you do excel(401), access(404), hardware(402), cisco(403) and workplace communaction
workplace is just like health and saftey stuff, communcating in the work place etc etc

and thats the whole course.

401 & 403 here http://www.cs.ntu.edu.au/homepages/jeff/resource.htm

404 & 402

http://informatics.ntu.edu.au/staff/greid/

EDIT: at uni now.. go dam excel

If you want to earn lots of money programming, find yourself a Lotus Notes C-API course or something, although they are rare, and hard, if your good at it you can get paid LOTS of money.

i hate programming
just wanan be a hardware technition
or own a store :P

Quote from El Presidente:
Look, before I did computer science I had the whole "just teach me the practical, p*ss off with the useless theory" attitude. I was dead wrong. The theory is essential to deep understanding of computers. Trust me.

I'm sure you got it all in 15 minutes...

I've heard my professor rant about the fifth normal form in databases. It got totally out of hand when I asked for real life scenarios of the fifth normal form (Hell, even the third normal form gets challenged when it comes to speed). My argument:The higher the normalization, the slower the database processing, the more efficient the storage. But as media storage gets cheaper as time goes on, speed is more practical than the fifth normal form.

Then I get thrown out of class!!!

I came back with a vengeance :mrgreen:

Theory must meet practice, otherwise get outta the way cause I'm Gunzer.

Quote from OverG:
[quote:fc69b5d987="El Presidente"]Look, before I did computer science I had the whole "just teach me the practical, p*ss off with the useless theory" attitude. I was dead wrong. The theory is essential to deep understanding of computers. Trust me.

I'm sure you got it all in 15 minutes...
[/quote:fc69b5d987]

Two years - alas I didn't get to networking and AI, which were topics I was really looking forward.

Quote from OverG:

I've heard my professor rant about the fifth normal form in databases. It got totally out of hand when I asked for real life scenarios of the fifth normal form (Hell, even the third normal form gets challenged when it comes to speed). My argument:The higher the normalization, the slower the database processing, the more efficient the storage. But as media storage gets cheaper as time goes on, speed is more practical than the fifth normal form.

Normalisation is not about speed or disk usage. Your serious DBA doesn't worry about those things, not upfront. Remember what Knuth said: premature optimisation is the root of all evil.

Normalisation is all about data integrity. Sure there are faster ways to store data. You could lay it down in a flatfile, or everyone's favourite flatfile-in-a-skirt, MySQL. But frankly you cannot trust a database that is not normalised. It can fail in unpredictable and possible undetectable ways. If your model is simple - a web bulletin board for instance - that's OK. But if you have a production database with upwards of 200 tables and 4 million records (I saw one while at Sydney Uni - 'twas well terrifying), then normalisation is no longer your friend. It is your divine saviour.

I mean I'm not going to say that everything everywhere needs 5NF/DKNF. People posting to web boards are confusing enough that I don't think anyone would notice corrupted data. But sometimes you'd want it as an individual. Databases for "mission critical" items are likely to attract 5NF. I'd prefer a slower 5NF database keeping my accounting and tax details, for instance: even Quicken passes most of the ACID test.

Remember that you can "shortcut" to 5NF/DKNF, which after includes - realistically relies on - the availability of triggers and domain limits. You can substitute triggers which "keep house" for various strung out tables and deep-magic queries, if you like.

Your professor sounds like a bit of a nutter, but he wasn't all wrong ... just a standard academic I guess :D

Quote from El Presidente:
But if you have a production database with upwards of 200 tables and 4 million records (I saw one while at Sydney Uni - 'twas well terrifying), then normalisation is no longer your friend. It is your divine saviour.

I have designed, developed(not entirely me of course<-disclaimer) and used to operate a production (in an accounting/medical facility) database that sustains more than 10,000 tables in less than a year of operation. Only 4 are different, the 9,996+ are all similar in structure and it goes only up to the fourth normal form. Why is it like that? Well, smaller tables, although numerous in quantity are easier to handle (full table operations) than large ones, which gives the reporting and full table operations much faster return times and more reliable on multi-user environment. I was all hardcore theoretical at that time of design and development but speed and reporting efficiency is a critical factor besides storage (Storage efficiency and accuracy being the top priority). My point: You are taught the right and wrong from school, but at the end of the day, the lessons from the "School of Hard Knocks" govern your decision making. If not, well... that's another story ;)

Now this thread could get long (and we might be veering away from topic...MODs please be patient). I'm sure both you and I just want to help out ZeReaper make a good choice on what to take. And coming back to the question/topic, I still say that IT takes secondary role from a trade or profession that IT can compliment.