{"id":1311,"date":"2012-09-14T21:29:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T01:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2012-09-14T21:29:54","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T01:29:54","slug":"thoughts-on-vilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=1311","title":{"rendered":"thoughts on vilt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years, I have taken (and given) a lot of <a href=\"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/2006\/05\/06\/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\">training<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had self-paced tutorials (printed and electronic), in-person lectures, hand-on labs, small groups, formal classes, one-on-one tutoring, and virtual instructor led training (VILT).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen two distinct types of VILT &#8211; good and bad. I have yet to see any &#8220;ok&#8221; training. It&#8217;s either great or horrid.<\/p>\n<p>This week I took the {{VMware}} {{vSphere}} 5 Install, Configure, Manage (ICM) class to begin the preparation to become a {{VMware Certified Professional}}.<\/p>\n<h4>Some initial thoughts on this class:<\/h4>\n<h6>(this class was excellent, btw &#8211; only matched by the HP Operations Orchestration 7.0 training I took 3.5 years ago shortly after the product had been renamed post-acquisition of Opsware by HP)<\/h6>\n<ul>\n<li>Our instructors, Steve &amp; Rebecca, did a fantastic job both in playing off each other, alternating to keep the class interested, and presenting the material<\/li>\n<li>Labs are always problematic &#8211; some folks are fast, others slow; some have issues, others none\n<ul>\n<li>Team \/ partner labs are even more problematic &#8211; making sure that both partners are learning in the process and neither is outstripping the other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Formal organization is good &#8211; ability to change based on class needs \/ interests is better<\/li>\n<li>Engaging the class with humor, &#8220;relevant&#8221; Q&amp;A, and other interaction is vital<\/li>\n<li>Learning your [randomly-assigned] partner&#8217;s strengths, weaknesses, background, and expectations is important as early as possible<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Other pros that should be taken and applied to all classes:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Clear learning objectives &#8211; stated and repeated throughout<\/li>\n<li>Labs which directly connect with the lessons<\/li>\n<li>Labs which logically build upon one another<\/li>\n<li>Team labs that are still workable by an individual if there is no available partner<\/li>\n<li>To the point slides and lectures<\/li>\n<li>Few enough slides in each lecture to keep our attention<\/li>\n<li>Few enough lectures between labs to be able to apply what we have just covered<\/li>\n<li>Presenter\/Lecturer\/Teacher with appropriate knowledge of the material being presented<\/li>\n<li>Remember what it&#8217;s like to not know the material<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Cons from this class (which I think are true of all VILT classes):<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Keeping attention on the lectures is\u00a0<em>entirely<\/em> up to the student &#8211; it can be easy to get distracted, especially if taking the class from home (this also applied to telecommuting &#8211; a topic for another time)<\/li>\n<li>Lab time is given on an as-needed basis &#8230; so once most of the class has gotten it done, a timer is set (eg 10 minutes)\n<ul>\n<li>For those in the class who finish rapidly, this can give a great opportunity to study, get work done, or goof off<\/li>\n<li>For those having issues and\/or who work more methodically etc, it can artificially limit their efforts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Because of the semi-random nature of lab length, some days can run long and others short<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Characteristics of bad VILT classes I have attended:<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Unclear objectives &#8211; if any<\/li>\n<li>Overly-long presentations<\/li>\n<li>Unrelated labs<\/li>\n<li>Long separation from lecture to lab<\/li>\n<li>Too much lab, too little lecture<\/li>\n<li>Too much lecture, too little lab<\/li>\n<li>Presenter with poor \/ non-existent knowledge of material (ie, read from slide only)<\/li>\n<li>Broken labs (often related to poor product base, over-subscribed lab, etc)<\/li>\n<li>Inflexibility with regards to lab and lecture start\/end times<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Conclusion<\/h4>\n<p>I really liked the {{vSphere}} ICM class &#8211; I learned a lot, and finally saw what I knew connected in an organized way that brought into focus my extant knowledge and helped me apply it in more useful ways in the future. Personally, I cannot recommend the trainers higher &#8211; Steve and Rebecca did a fantastic job, and I think we were fortunate to have good trainers: it made the material far more fun to learn, helped keep our focus, and made the whole week a positive experience.<\/p>\n<p>Given the opportunity, I think all system administrators and system integrators should take a class like this one &#8211; even if {{virtualization}} is not in play: seeing the concepts, understanding the architecture, and learning how to design a virtualized environment will carry-over well to other arenas in the IT world.<\/p>\n<p>My lab partner is a DBA for Yahoo &#8211; never saw virtualization before, hasn&#8217;t been a sysadmin, etc: but seeing how the environment works, how to build it, and how to apply architecture to systemic thinking helped open his eyes a bit to the world beyond data &#8230; and, I think, will make him a better DBA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the years, I have taken (and given) a lot of training. I&#8217;ve had self-paced tutorials (printed and electronic), in-person lectures, hand-on labs, small groups, formal classes, one-on-one tutoring, and virtual instructor led training (VILT). I&#8217;ve seen two distinct types of VILT &#8211; good and bad. I have yet to see any &#8220;ok&#8221; training. It&#8217;s &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=1311\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">thoughts on vilt<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,11,41],"tags":[393,534,628,783,812,816,824,829,840],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-1311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-education","category-technical","tag-hpoo","tag-opsware","tag-remote","tag-training","tag-vcp","tag-vilt","tag-vmware","tag-vsphere","tag-webex"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1311"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=1311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}