How to choice

[mott]

I wanna to take an IT college course(certificate or diploma) in SAIT,however I get no idea which course to choice from:

Diploma Courses:
Information Technology:

* Computer Systems Major
* Network Systems Major
* Software Development Major
* Telecom Systems Major

Certification Courses:
CCNA Exploration Certificate
CCNP v5.0 Certificate of Achievement
A+ In Depth
Database Design and Administration
IT Security and Compliance
By the way,my email:mott@live.ca

[jbking]

What kind of IT work appeals to you and you believe you are good at:

1) Developing software. This is where you'd be writing the stuff other people use, just like how someone else wrote the software that makes these message boards possible. Note that this can also include investigating application issues where the problem may be with the code, data, network, or user error.

2) Network systems. This is how computers and other hardware talk to each other, e.g. setting up firewalls, routers, wireless and load balancers to give some examples. Cisco and Nortel are a couple of companies known for making a lot of this kind of gear though there are others now starting to be a bit more mature. Telecom Systems Major would be similar to this I'd think except for being a bit more in telephony stuff like VoIP and how to handle calling systems.

3) Help desk / System Administrator. This is likely what the "Computer Systems Major" would lead to which is where you'd get to set up servers, manage how much capacity is being used, as well as address various issues internal users have with their machine. This can be a little different from 1 in that you may have to troubleshoot 3rd party applications like Microsoft Outlook or Excel possibly.

4) Project Manager. Like to run the show? This is where you'd have the challenge of tracking how on course a project is, what risks does it face, allocating resources and ensuring things get done on time and in budget.

5) Security officer. Want to be the guy that checks out what everyone has on their computer? Write up a policy for how the internet should be used within the office? This is the kind of work in this field which is still somewhat in its infancy. What kind of encryption to use for wireless networks, strength of passwords, length of how long a password can be used before being changed, and how to determine what protocols to use for VPN would be a few more examples here.

6) DBA. The Database Design and Administration would fall under this camp where you get to learn about how data is stored, backed up, structured in clusters, and why a particular structure for the data is better than others.

This does leave out a couple of other camps like Quality Assurance and Building Engineers that some companies will have in their IT department.