You may have already seen the letter from CompTIA's CEO, Todd Thibodeaux about moves CompTIA is making in response to COVID-19. In case you have missed it here is the basics.

CompTIA exams will be available for remote delivery beginning approximately 30 days from today. Please use the link below and register to receive continuous updates regarding remote testing availability. We also recommend you share this link with candidates.

https://www.comptia.org/testing/online-testing-interest-form

Any previously purchased vouchers will be usable with the remote system and all vouchers scheduled to expire from March 17th through April 30th, 2020 will be extended through June 30th, 2020. We'll continue to monitor timelines and make further adjustments for other periods if warranted.

I am excited about the changes being made and look forward to the online testing. Check back for status updates as I will post them here as they become available!

As some of you know effective June 30, 2020, I am retiring from the California community college system. One of the consequences of retiring is that I cannot teach for California's public educational institutions for a period of 180 days (meaning until after December 30, 2020). After that date, I can begin teaching and because I want to stay off of California freeways, I've decided to focus efforts on qualifying as an online instructor, available to serve our California students. To do that I must satisfy college requirements, which include completing training as an online instructor. I wish they were uniform, but with 115 colleges and 72 districts, uniformity is out of the question. The best way to go is for me to take an online course provided by @One. This 12-week course will enable me to teach online IT/cybersecurity courses as a majority of the colleges. My sense is this current situation will result in the online courses will increase and after the emergency will continue to be more commonplace as students get use to being training in this manner.

Thought you might be interested!

Hello Everyone: Due to the impacts of COVID-19, all CompTIA exam vouchers with an original expiration date between March 17th, 2020 to April 30, 2020 are now valid through June 30, 2020. CompTIA will continue to monitor timelines and any additional updates will be communicated.

*Please note for the latest information on certification exam test delivery and testing policies pertaining to COVID-19, please refer to the Pearson VUE update site.

Please post or reach out with any questions.

Best,
Liz

See: https://home.pearsonvue.com/coronavirus-update

Darn. I was scheduled to take the beta exam for the Server+ on March 26th. I wonder if I'll be permitted to take it at a later date......

We are experiencing crazy times! So many schools are closing down and many schools are having Spring Break this week uncertain or knowing they will not return to the classroom next week. This may be a challenge to many face-to-face instructors having to switch to a virtual platform for teaching with zero prep time.

We have a great blend of teachers in this community. It would be great if our virtual instructors would share some tips and tricks for getting course up and running quickly. Thanks to @Steve Linthicum for sharing the resources he found for special offers of virtual training services. This is a great start. What other advice can we offer to support teachers facing this task. Suggestions for best practices, tools to use, advice for student engagement, how to for creating screen-casts, or over all suggestions to help students provide guidance to their students.

I know this is a great community! Let's stand together and help each other out!

Greetings,

In addition to all the great resources @Steve Linthicum mentions, CompTIA also has a valuable Free Resource called The Future of Tech. Here you will find content idea for providing students with baseline digital literacy and familiarity with emerging technologies. This content is aimed at the "Fundamentals" course. On this site you will find the following 5 Lessons, plus 2 bonus Lessons.

Future of Tech Topics/Lessons:

• Big Data
• AI
• IoT
• CyberSecurity
• Digital Health

Bonus Collections/ Lessons:

• Ethics in Tech
• Personal Data Ownership

Each lesson is organized with reading, video and interactive exercises. There is no formal assessment, however would be idea to assign a written assignment or team-based assignment. This content is also ideal if you have eLearning classroom which may not have access to all of the right "applications" at home and you need to switch gears.

For those teaching courses geared towards our CompTIA certifications, you have access to the following eLearning options include:

1.) CertMaster Learn (both self-study and instructor-led versions) fully scoped and sequenced course (with or without the instructor admin tools)
2.) CompTIA labs (hosted on Learn on Demand Systems)
3.) CertMaster Practice (certification exam prep)

Please let us know if you need help with your course. You can contact [email protected] or post here and we will get in touch with you ASAP.

Thanks so very much!

Best,
Liz Wannemacher
[email protected]

I received the following information from a LinkedIn colleague that may be worth sharing with your faculty colleagues:

Many educational institutions are moving their face-to-face classes to online to help slow the spread of COVID-19. I am finding out that many EdTech companies are postings free or extended trial offers to educators impacted by these. I compiled a few that I was able to find. If you have any to add please let me know.

Free courseware from Wiley: https://lnkd.in/e_hGuUp

Expanded feature for the Free Webex Personal account: https://lnkd.in/edYiduy

Removal of the 40-minute limit for Basic Zoom account for users in certain countries: https://lnkd.in/eyEEWQp

Microsoft Office 365 E1 6-month Trial: https://lnkd.in/eERUkHX

Premium features of Google Hangouts Meet until July 1, 2020: https://lnkd.in/eTvms_V

Loom Pro free for education: https://lnkd.in/ethvjHm

Free access to TechSmith Snagit and Video Review through June 30, 2020: https://lnkd.in/enrirQw

Three months free RingCentral: https://lnkd.in/erGfWtP

Free access to Coursera course catalog: https://lnkd.in/e6rhM78

Steve Linthicum, JD, CISSP
Professor Emeritus
Orange County Region Director - Business Engagement
Information and Communications Technologies / Digital Media
Powered by California Community Colleges
(916) 300-7602
Email: [email protected]
https://ictdmsector.org/Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/801335390

Earlier this week I attended a panel discussion at Mira Costa Community College. The panel discussion centered upon what the industry representatives thought we should be teaching. Below is a subsequent email discussion I had with one of the industry representatives. I think it would interest CIN members. I'd appreciate your feedback.

Email from Steve Linthicum (CCCCO) to William Figueroa (Viasat)

I wanted to talk about concerns I have with community colleges continuing to focus on hardware and a belief I have that it probably makes sense to move away from the hardware courses and focus on cloud computing. That belief is contained in an article I wrote that was published last month by Certification Magazine (link provided above).

As noted in the article, I'm "retiring" on June 30th from the California community college system. Rick Cassoni has asked that I teach for Mira Costa (specifically their Cisco CCNA class and possibly their Security+ related class), something I cannot do until the Spring 2021 because of a requirement to take 6 months off. Based upon where I believe things are headed, I'm not sure students will achieve a ROI (return on instruction) benefit from taking the Cisco line of courses that are focused on its router and switch line of products. A stronger benefit in my opinion would be focusing on gaining an understanding of cloud computing, with a focus on AWS and Azure. That is a direction I'm focused on as evidenced in my recent blog postings.

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Steve

Response from Wilson Figueroa

I would generally agree with those statements, but there are some things to keep in mind.

• We do design equipment that is self-contained and requires the use of routers and switches, but that is much less today.
• I think students need to have a very good understanding of TCP / IP and protocols and how that all works.
• If they need Cisco or Juniper Certs – those are offered by schools and online.

We are finding that multi-cloud is not only a nice to have, but a need to have.

• The different cloud providers appear to be specializing in different things and you now choose the one that has the best tools for your use case.
• We have our own private cloud using Rackspace and enterprise equipment, plus we use Azure, AWS, and GCP.
• There are many security arguments for multi-cloud – like eliminating vendor lock-in, the ability to easily move containerized apps to different cloud providers, supporting different regions around the world, better support for real-time work (like Kubernetes with Google cloud).

What is similar is that each cloud provider has a shared security model. Students should be taught what that means, how you set up security services and how you monitor those. For example, how do you look and interpret CloudWatch and CloudTrail logs in addition to your private cloud and enterprise logs.

Also, CC is now shifting to things like Lambda Function (Serverless) and we already run what are called immutable containers. The tools, SecDevOps (or DevSecOps), DevOps and cloud tools are growing at a fast pace. I even suspect that Quantum Computers will be time-shared and you will access those over the cloud.

So, I think it is critical to teach students to de-emphasize the hardware and learn the way of the cloud because it will continue to grow in breadth (cloud services and tools), tools and use for everyone as today companies want to focus on their platform as opposed to the smaller view of their products.

Thanks ~Wilson

Good afternoon,
I have taught many CompTIA classes (A+, Neworking+. and Security+) and now looking forward top jump into the CompTIA CySA+ pool.
I am looking forward to taking the Train the Trainer program.

It is nice to meet you all.

Just a quick note that our previous Cloud Essentials+ certification (001) is retiring on May 12th. Let me know if you need any help with resources to help you prep for (002). Thanks! Liz

Below is a link to an article I wrote earlier this week that relates specifically to the actions of Microsoft in retiring a series of somewhat dated certifications. It should be noted that retirement includes eliminating the MCSE branding, something that's been around since the '90s.

As most of us know, in June 2019, Cisco made a decision to drastically modify its certification offerings, eliminating the CCENT foundational certification and changing its CCNA and CCNP certification tracks. The Cisco and Microsoft decisions, as near as I can tell, were made without asking for input from the instructor community. Thoughts?

I am busy prepping to write the CS0-001 exam on the 2nd of April 2020.
I have been running through the Instructor manual(s) to set up the lab environment and so far I am getting things right.
What do/did you use to prep for this monster?

See: https://scccd.peopleadmin.com/postings/3090

Welcome to the CIN!

Seems like we have some new faces here in CIN and, in an effort to try to get the CiN server to crash, encourage some new activity on the CIN board, I wanted to put up a post to see who the newbies are, what certs you're working on, what your goals are, whatever - just get a conversation going.

So, who's up?

Cheers,

/r

Dear all,

any A+ material and resources for A+ exam preparation and voucher?

Dear all,

I will take ITF+ U61 exam tomorrow. Hope I am have a good luck.
If you guide have something to say for me? please!

This is a long term position for the properly qualified candidate...must have a minimum of secret clearance.

Workforce Development Program is seeking an instructor 25 hours per week for A+ Class. Prefer teaching experience with strong interpersonal skills, friendly and patient personality, good writing and communication skills, advanced computer skills, ability to work with a diverse student population, and an engaging teaching style. Class scheduled to start March 16, 2020
email us: [email protected]

Be sure to join our product team for the CompTIA Cybersecurity Analyst (CySA+) CS0-002 pre-launch webinar happening on March 5th at 11:00am CST. If you are unable to join at that time, please register for the webinar to receive follow up information. Register here.

During this webinar, our speakers will discuss the importance of this certification given industry trends, highlight key changes to the new exam (CS0-002), and provide an opportunity to ask questions.
In this 45-minute webinar, you will:

• Discover how industry changes are impacting the security analyst job role, even though core job functions remain the same
• Review updates to the new objectives
• Learn what available resources and Official CompTIA Content options will be available at launch

Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about the upcoming CySA+ CS0-002 exam launching on April 21, 2020.

CySA+ Pre-launch Webinar Registration

You'll also find the new CySA+ certification guide attached to this post.

Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) is currently seeking a CompTIA A+ / Network+ Full-Time Instructor

This is a great opportunity to teach small groups of Veterans the necessary skills to transition into meaningful careers.

Description
Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) is currently seeking an CompTIA A+ / Network+ Full-time Instructor.

CompTIA A+ Course Objectives:
The course objective is to ensure the student obtains the skills necessary to install, configure, upgrade, repair, troubleshoot, enhance, and perform maintenance on basic PC hardware and operating systems. Upon completion of this course, the student will understand:

• BIOS, monitor system devices and flash BIOS
• Main system components and troubleshooting
• Custom system configurations
• TCP/IP stack and common usage of components
• Printers , their installation, features and troubleshooting
• Information security, including physical security and security best practices
• Android and iOS
• Installation, configuration, administration and troubleshooting of Microsoft operating systems
• Wired and wireless standards, technologies and implementation

CompTIA Network+ Course Objectives:
At the conclusion of the course, students will have mastery of the following subjects:

• Describe the basic components and characteristics of a network
• Identify wired network-to-network connections
• Install LAN wiring components
• Differentiate between network internetworking devices
• Configure the TCP/IP communication protocols for a wired connection
• Install wireless networking components
• Identify common security threats and mitigation techniques
• Secure operating systems and network devices
• Control access to the network
• Monitor network resources
• Troubleshoot the network

Additional Responsibilities:

• Curriculum development
• Instruction covering customer service, interpersonal skills, and job readiness topics

Class Schedule:

• Full-time, Monday - Friday

Average Class Size:

• 10 Students

Compensation:

• Depending on Experience

Requirements:

• Minimum of bachelors, masters preferred.
• One (1) year of teaching experience in applicable area.

Location:

• Dallas, TX (Greater Dallas Area)

Interested parties please: Apply Now!

Hello,

Our company, Stone River eLearning, is looking for virtual course creators/instructors in the following areas. If you are interested in a content partnership and are trained with the latest versions, please reach out to me at [email protected].

1. CompTIA IT Fundamentals
2. CompTIA Linux+
3. CompTIA Server+
4. CompTIA CySA+
5. CompTIA PenTest+
6. CompTIA Project+
7. CompTIA CTT+
8. CompTIA Cloud Essentials

Thanks for looking!

-Tyler

Hello Team! Today was my day! After CISSP kicked my butt last year, I've been studying CompTIA CASP+ for a year with dual unsuccessful results. I did not let it get me down. What is did do was get me angry! While studying for CASP+, I've upgraded my A+, Network+, Security+, and grabbed Cloud Essentials+.

Today, I went into the testing center and PASSED CASP+

During my journey, I kept one thing in mind. Always fail forward!

Hello all,

An odd request but I am looking for Practice Papers/Past Papers for Students as some of the students I've had would like to get more of a feel of how the questions are worded in the CompTIA exams (especially those who are new to IT).

There are some apps and websites online but I'd prefer to show them official material.

Thanks in advance.