IT courses can cost quite a bit of money. If you are like me and want to have more training than your company’s training budget allows you, you might want to have a look at how you can get some free training under your belt. Free training can come from anywhere really, be that ebooks, books, onsite learning platforms or online lab, you just have to look for it and make your pick. Some even come with free certificates of completion. At the bottom you can find my personal favorite picks.
But let me give you some learning possibilities which you probably have not considered yet and let me start with the most unobvious ones:
How to become a technical reviewer of a book or video after that book or video has been released officially.
- Pack Publishing: After you have purchased a book through the packtpub website, they might ask you to write a review on Amazon about the Packt product you have purchased. This will grant you a free token to any of their products. So complete that review and get a free token for a product.
- Pearson has their own portal where you can register for product reviews. You will get a free digital copy of the product you will review. You can find the link here or just click on the picture.
How to become a technical reviewer of a book or video before that book or video has been released officially.
- I only know how it works for Packt. Packt Publishing is always on the look for technical reviewers. You might want to send them an email if you are interested in doing this. Take note that being a technical reviewer will take a big chunk out of your free time in the evenings and weekends. But the advantage here is that you will have to study the subject in depth to give proper feedback to the author and as a reward Packt will give you at least a free hard copy and ebook of the book you have reviewed. You can register here or click on the picture.
Attend a technology conference.
- Good technology conferences have excellent technical deep dive sessions. If you like the know specifics which exceed the standard IT trainings, this is definitely the place to be. In case your budget is limited, in some cases, the technical sessions become available for free or after paying a fee but certainly not at the costs of attending a conference. It depends om vendor to vendor really: VMworld, CiscoLive!, Microsoft Ignite, etc. I have to say though that being physically there actually is better than watching recorded sessions. Being there allows you to ask questions during and after presentations, to get involved in discussions, panels etc. There is nothing like participating in conversations to learn more about technology.
My list of online free learning platforms:
Bare in mind that not all vendors will offer all courses or books or labs for free.
- https://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/index.html VMworld 2016 US session playbacks are publicly available for free
- http://labs.hol.vmware.com/ and docs.hol.vmware.com/
- www.vbrownbag.com Trust me, this worth your while!
- https://featurewalkthrough.vmware.com
- https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning
- https://www.edx.org
- https://mkto.cisco.com/Security-Scholarship.html Cisco CCNA-cyberOps Scholarship program. Yes Cisco will pay for your education and exams!
- https://dcloud.cisco.com/
- https://www.netacad.com/ (Not everything is free, but will give you a free certificate of completion at the end of the course)
- https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/welcome
- https://education.emc.com/guest/training/elearning.aspx (Not everything is free)
- http://www.flackbox.com/ (Not everything is free)
- https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs
- https://aws.amazon.com/free/
- https://aws.amazon.com for tutorials
- https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/?v=17.23h
- https://www.pluralsight.com/learn 10 day free trial
- https://www.safaribooksonline.com/public/free-trial/ 10 day free trial. You have to do this!
- youtube : defintely check youtube after all major conferences. A lot of sessions will be made available to the general public.
Kim
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