What is a Microcomputer Software Support Specialist?

Always having worked in an office environment before becoming a mother, I found it very difficult to find full-time employment once my children were all in school. It had been six years since I had worked and my computer skills were not up-to-date. Starting my job search I went to the employment center and it was recommended that I upgrade my computer skills. After looking into courses offered at our local community college, I decided I needed more than what they had to offer. There was an Academy of Learning Career and Business College in town so I made an appointment to go and talk to them. They had everything that I needed and I enrolled in the Microcomputer Software Support Specialist course.

The Academy of Learning uses an integrated learning system with flexible scheduling allowing students to work at their own pace within committed guidelines.

Personally I really liked this idea, as I was eager to return to the work force, which gave me the motivation to study, work hard and achieve my diploma. I loved being back at school and one of the great things was I could pick my hours of study between nine in the morning and nine at night.

The way in which this school is set up is as follows:

There are one or two large rooms with desks and computers that are connected to the Internet for students to use. On the desks are tape recorders and headphones. You have a binder of each course that you are taking from which you work from. Each course has several tapes that you listen to and follow along in your binder. There are no instructor’s, only facilitators, who help if you have questions, or get stuck on something you just could not understand. At the end of each course you are given an exam. The exam has two parts, a written exam and a practical exam that is done on the computer, which is saved to a disk. I took this course in 1997 so I am sure that a few things have changed such as disks and tapes. I see now that they also use laptops.The way in which this school is set up is as follows:

Intro To Personal Computers

Keyboard Skill Building Level 1

Lotus for windows Level 1,2

Lotus Level 1 DOS

MS-DOS

PageMaker for Windows

PowerPoint

Simply for Windows

Windows 95: Introduction

Word for Windows level 1,2,3

WordPerfect for Windows level 1,2,3

Courses that I took to obtain my diploma:

(Please keep in mind that this was in 1997)

Access Level 1, 2

Basic Bookkeeping Level 1, 2

Basic Keyboarding

Business Correspondence Level 1, 2

Corel Draw

DBase IV

Excel Level 1, 2

Intro to Windows 3.1

(You can really tell this was in 1999)

I finished my 12-month course of 28 individual courses in six months with honors.

I highly recommend this way of study for someone needing to upgrade skills or start a new career. You can either take a diploma course or an individual course.

Hospitality

Human services

Information technology

Insurance

Office administration

Web design

This is a list of some of the courses that The Academy of Learning offers:

Accounting

Applied arts

Business

Customer service

Healthcare

Home inspection

Schools are located all across North America. In Australia there are schools in Sydney, Blacktown and Liverpool. India has a school in Hyderabad and in New Zealand the school is located in Eden Terrace.

Upon finishing all my courses and receiving my diploma, I was offered a great opportunity with The Academy of Learning. I started a Facilitator in Training Course, which I completed after taking many more computer courses. These courses had to be completed with a final mark of 95% or above. While taking these courses I also worked at the Academy as a facilitator in training helping students, selling courses to people that would come into the school and performing various office duties. On completion I started a full time job and worked there for 2 years. It was one of the most rewarding jobs that I have ever had.

If anyone is interested in attending The Academy of Learning, there are many websites that you can visit to find out where exactly they are located and how to contact them. I believe that they do offer online courses in some of their locations.