| Jon Nelson on Tue, 12 Jun 2001 10:00:05 -0400 |
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I just returned from a LONG week at the Training Camp in the Poconos where I earned my LCA from Sair/GNU. I know some of you are very opposed to this sort of training and would tell me to RTFM but I thought some of you might be interested. It was held at the Fernwood Resort in the Poconos. I was housed in a condo with a roomate. Only one of the rooms had a phone and a TV, not that we were ever in our rooms. The resort its self was pretty shabby (i.e. things falling apart, washers flooding rooms...etc). Breakfast and lunch were provided, dinner on testing nights. They had a plethora of snacks and drinks (Starbucks coffee) and would get you anything you wanted. The Training Camp staff was very friendly and accommodating. The training facility was pretty nice. They had nice sized classrooms with ample workspace. They provided you with the course material, a backpack (minus any corporate logo), pens, a large insulated cup, t-shirt, and cd case with the following distros: OpenLinux eServer 2.3, OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4, Suse 7.0, Redhat 7.0, TurboLinux Workstation 6.0, TurboLinux Server 6.0, Corel Linux 1.1, Slackware 7.1, and Debian 2.2. They had numerous Window$ workstations with T1 access to check email as well as hubs to connect to. We were in class for at least 14 hours a day. The morning was lecture, labs in the afternoon and testing at night. The training its' self was very good, I definitely learned a lot. The different sections were Installation, Sys Admin, Networking, and Security and Ethics. The one thing everyone had a problem with was the testing. There were questions that didn't have correct answers, were obviously talking about one person but used two peoples names, tested on information that was not in the courseware or only covered in one paragraph and one question that had an answer that ended in halfway through the sentence. There were many more as well. Sair/GNU apparently had just changed their pool of test questions and didn't employ too much quality control. A couple of the students failed some tests by one or two questions. The instructor called Sair/GNU to protest the questions and was told they would check them out and get back to him. They never got back to him with an answer and stopped returning his calls and emails. This added a higher level of stress to the students who failed and forced them to take the exam again and shell out another $100. The instructor was so angry that he stated that they might terminate their contract with Sair/GNU. One of the reasons I took the course was the fact that it was Sair/GNU so I would not be tied to a distro. I was very disappointed with their tests and their level of professionalism. After this experience I am not sure I would recommend this certification to anyone. If you are planning to take it I have heard that all the books out there are very poor. Our class found the brain dumps on the net very helpful. Overall the training and amenities were very good and the facilities and testing were very poor. I case you're wondering I passed all the tests on the first try except networking ( which contained a lot of the screwed up questions ). *************NOTE NEW NEW ALT. EMAIL!!!!****************** Trooper Jon S. NELSON, LCA
Pennsylvania State Police
Computer Crimes Unit
Office: 610-344-4471
Page: 866-284-1603 (Toll Free)
Nextel: 610-637-0707 (Private ID 8777)
Alt. email: jonelson@state.pa.us <------------------------
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