Questions about my ICT college course

Associate
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Hey guys, I started college about two weeks ago. I got enrolled onto the IT Practitioners (Software & Games) Design BTEC National course, but now that I've been doing the course I'm not very sure how far it will take me in the IT industry as right now were doing very basic tasks.

My friend has also started college two weeks ago and I've been told that in his A Level Computing class he has already been coding in Java and looking at other developement SDK's.

My main question here is how far will this course take me, will I be able to get onto a Computer Science course? Or even if I wanted to go straight into Employment or any other IT course in Higher Edution, where could it take me?

Hopefully some of you may have done this same type of course, or atleast know how the course is viewed on in the IT industry.
 
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I'm moving into halls tommorow at Reading Uni , to do computer science - coming from the BND IT Prac (@Henley Col) !

Its an ok course (not the very best), but you will get your head around pascal,c,c++, PHP,SQL and other such things a bit later in the course. As long as you do well, Uni is deffinatly acheivable ( a lot more easily than a-levels in this case) , My entry reqs were DDM , i got DDD without too much effort.
 
Soldato
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Hush :p ,

"C++ will live forever!" - Programming Teacher

Experience in C# would be better tbh. Though C and C++ are still used loads in industry.

Though our ICT A-Level was an A-Level in writing word documents :(. The web design unit was "make it in frontpage using tables" (I used dreamweaver PHP and CSS as that sounded too rediculous) and of the 50 marks only 15 were for the website..... all the others were for the critical analysis of your evaluation of your story board of your plan to assess the evaluation of the plan of the customers needs.
 
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Experience in C# would be better tbh. Though C and C++ are still used loads in industry.

Though our ICT A-Level was an A-Level in writing word documents :(. The web design unit was "make it in frontpage using tables" (I used dreamweaver PHP and CSS as that sounded too rediculous) and of the 50 marks only 15 were for the website..... all the others were for the critical analysis of your evaluation of your story board of your plan to assess the evaluation of the plan of the customers needs.

this is why qualifications are mostly a joke and employers want experience
 
Soldato
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this is why qualifications are mostly a joke and employers want experience

Which is exactly why I'm spending my gap year working for a large software house!

Actually that's a lie, it's a lot more than a software house these days. According to wikipedia we're a "British software services company providing business consultancy and technical consultancy, IT solutions and managed services to public and private sectors."
And from the company website "...is an IT services company specialising in the delivery of intelligent business solutions. We help our clients to exploit corporate information assets to yield tangible business benefits.
Bridging the gap between business and technology, *** provides Business Consulting, Technical Consulting, Solution Delivery and Managed Services to deliver innovative and dependable ICT solutions that address real business needs. *** was founded in 1979 and is based in its wholly owned premises in the World Heritage City of Bath."

But yea... a software house :p

Guess who learnt all the corporate company image stuff in the first week!


EDIT: Don't know why I blanked the company name... given it's Bath's largest high technology employer it should be fairly easy to google..... I blame the posting time tbh!
 
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Associate
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Seriously, an A-Level in some kind of computing area won't itself get you a job anywhere.

You need to prove to employers that you're capable of doing the job. Research the area you want to get into, and learn the skills you need.

In my experience you don't need any computing "qualifications" at all to do well, so if you think the course is wasting your time, change it.

You could be doing textiles or cooking and still get a job as a developer if you can write good code.
 
Associate
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Which is exactly why I'm spending my gap year working for a large software house!

Actually that's a lie, it's a lot more than a software house these days. According to wikipedia we're a "British software services company providing business consultancy and technical consultancy, IT solutions and managed services to public and private sectors."
And from the company website "...is an IT services company specialising in the delivery of intelligent business solutions. We help our clients to exploit corporate information assets to yield tangible business benefits.
Bridging the gap between business and technology, *** provides Business Consulting, Technical Consulting, Solution Delivery and Managed Services to deliver innovative and dependable ICT solutions that address real business needs. *** was founded in 1979 and is based in its wholly owned premises in the World Heritage City of Bath."

Hmmm I wonder who you could work for :p

And thanks for the info - you a salesman? :D
 
Man of Honour
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Experience in C# would be better tbh. Though C and C++ are still used loads in industry.

Though our ICT A-Level was an A-Level in writing word documents :(. The web design unit was "make it in frontpage using tables" (I used dreamweaver PHP and CSS as that sounded too rediculous) and of the 50 marks only 15 were for the website..... all the others were for the critical analysis of your evaluation of your story board of your plan to assess the evaluation of the plan of the customers needs.

The BTEC is so much the same, do something fairly easy - justify it, evauluate and analyse your choice mentioning alternatives and improvements.

ohh, off to halls in 2 1/2hrs :eek:
 
Soldato
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Which is exactly why I'm spending my gap year working for a large software house!

Actually that's a lie, it's a lot more than a software house these days. According to wikipedia we're a "British software services company providing business consultancy and technical consultancy, IT solutions and managed services to public and private sectors."
And from the company website "...is an IT services company specialising in the delivery of intelligent business solutions. We help our clients to exploit corporate information assets to yield tangible business benefits.
Bridging the gap between business and technology, *** provides Business Consulting, Technical Consulting, Solution Delivery and Managed Services to deliver innovative and dependable ICT solutions that address real business needs. *** was founded in 1979 and is based in its wholly owned premises in the World Heritage City of Bath."

I read that and my mind is going "blah blah blah"

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001300.html

:)
 
Soldato
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Experience alone is useless if it isn't in what the employer is looking for. The qualifications are to get your CV noticed and give you the background knowledge, but you still need to be able to implement said knowledge in practice. Which is why I choose to do an IT degree myself, as it backs up my past experience and will diversify what I already know.
 
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Associate
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Hey guys after a bit of searching and talking to sr4470, I'm considering doing some MS certified exams and paying for them out my own pocket.

At the moment it seems like my course is kind of a waste of time to me as a lot of the things I've done so far in the course I have already done my self, such as learning computer parts and building computers ect. So if I was to drop my course then I would try and do the exams to be a MSCE.

Would any one reccommend this or would you say its essential to do a course at college before considering doing any kind of MS exam.

I could try getting in contact with a family member as I did my work experience at the Hospital which she works at and see if I could get some kind of work there even as a Trainee as I will only be 17 in December.

Not got my heart set on leaving college but im just trying to explore all my options now as my course is 9AM - 4.30 PM four days a week and it feels like part of the course is just work place related and the rest is IT stuff I know or could easily teach my self. Stuff like advanced spreadsheets, basic databases and Im quite sure that even if I did do this course I would still end up wanting to work with servers, networks ect.

So any advice is helpful here, sr4470 has been a great help also so far aswell. Thanks to all the other guys who also replied to this thread :).
 
Soldato
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The whole point of college courses, especially BTEC's is to get you into Uni on a similiar course. I did exactly this, BTEC IT Practitioners (Software Dev iirc) and then went onto Computer Systems Engineering @ UWE.

Do you want to go to uni? If yes, stick with it. It is a heinously poor course, but its got to be done if you want to go to uni. Alternatively take a year out, reapply next year for 3 or 4 worthwhile A-Levels like physics maths chemistry etc. and go to whatever uni you fancy on whatever course you fancy!

Or quit and try and get on the work ladder, easier said than done but ultimately more rewarding than spending another 6 years (and thousands of pounds) on education.
 
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