SkillsTrain Reviews from Students

Currantly I am managing to progress with my course whilst I am looking for work, having job interviews and setting up my own buisness/

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I have obviously gained a very good knowledge about IT and moreso get use to working on PC. My brain is now sharp and ready to assimilate correctly . The course has apparently helped me to move forward.

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Prior to this course, it was necessary for me to complete the ECDL because I was verging on computer illiterate. Working part time, and looking after young children, I found a void where I was not mentally challenged nor achieving as much as I had hoped to in my teens. I looked into many possibilites of career change and fell upon Web Design as it seemed to stimulate key skills I already possessed, fulfill a need to be creative and integrate and enhance skills needed in todays modern society. As well as working I teach human values to children on a voluntary basis. For this I also foresaw the need to be computer proficient as a necessity for future projects. At work my new skills will also be a huge benefit to the company where I work. With this in mind I proposed my study endeavours with a view to help the company develop a web site to the managing director, which was a tense yet successful proposal. I now need to follow this through. I have a time scale to adhere to and feel driven to stick to it.

In order to achieve this long term goal there is still a long way to go. However I know I am achieving because in areas of my life, people are asking for my help and advice wherever IT issues are concerned. This feels rewarding,great for self esteem yet slightly unbelievable!

All seemed to be going well and to plan for my time frame until recently where we had a death in our family. Our family life turned upside down and where optimism and willingness to succeed reigned, negativity and sorrow persisted. Simple tasks became tiresome and studying and my own priorities faded in to the background to make way for keeping the family grounded. We recently have moved home also which was extremely unsettling. The onus being on me, a lot of time has been spent on organising a smooth change in locality. This time though with my new IT skills, I was able to change a lot of mundane details online without fearing that the methods would be unaffective! I am aware of the benefits of being IT literate. I save on a lot of paper wastage which is great for the environment.

With time I have had to pick up the pieces whilst supporting the family which is emotionally difficult, but I have slowly began to revert to normality or the nearest to normality that can be achieved. I still do intend to complete my course and achieve my goals.

It has been a very personal achievment to be where I am now. I have more confidence in myself that I can achieve anything I want to, and for the first time in years feel ambition and thirst for knowledge feature strongly.

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Hi
This is the first time I have entered into student of the month. Just thought I would tell you about my progress so far. I started the web design course last September. This was probably a bad time to start as both my parents and parent-in-law's were going through a divorce, and this made home life quite difficult (as you could probably tell as my first results were only 65%). The year gradually got worse as my brother was very ill and passed away on Christmas eve, aged 30. It was originally his idea for me to do this course, as he knew I was no longer enjoying my current job and was looking for somthing different. I had most of January off and decided it was a good time to try and get back on track with this course. I have since re-sat the first section and passed it scoring 100%, my last two sections I have scored 95% and 80%. which were also classed as passes. I hope to keep up this level and try to pass this course ASAP. I know my brother would be proud of me if I did (and would like to take some credit as it was his idea), so that's what I intend to do. This is not probably what you would class as student of the month material, but I would just like to say you can do well at things if you put your mind to it, no matter what life throws at you.

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1.Scoring 93 per cent on assignment six.
2.Since starting part B I've finding it hard to drag my self away from studying it, I'm really enjoying this part of the course so much.

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I have now been doing the CIW with Skills Train for just over a year, Even though I find some areas hard I am still learing new things every week. I have found since doing the course I'm being asked to do websites for community centres and personal websites, which means the work is already coming in and I have not even done the whole course yet.

I have been slacking with my studies since after Christmas but I'm now going to try and get back on with doing the live training and also getting helping tips from Student World.

Thanks Guys!

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TMA ASSIGNMENTS FOR VERSION 5, WITHOUT ANY RE-SUBMISSION

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From not having an understanding of what I was reading, I have started to get in to xhtml and css with glee, I spend as much time as I can studying now and enjoy it although I am limited as I am a single parent of my two children one of which has autism.

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I feel that I have acheived a great deal this last month. First my health has been poor with a bronchitus followed by server asthma along with a trapped nerve in the lower region of my back. All of which put me in bed for some consiterable time. Then just as I was getting over this , my mother was rushed into hospital and was diagnosed with Parkinsons Desease. Now on top of getting better myself and looking after three teenagers a full time job and studying, I now have to wash and dress my mother before work. Through this I managed to receive 90% in my last assignment.

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As some of the tutors will know that when I started this course I had the miss fortune of loosing my joband if that was not a big enough kick in the teeth my mother had a stroke in November. I was at the point of giving up the course one because of financal restrictions but for the fact that I was and still am caring for my mother, she has made a good recovery so that is good but it is very hard to find the time to get down and study during the day many times having to do some of my studys after mother is in bed.
In this light I feel that I am doing very well in my course studys

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Hi. My name is Alan Ryan and I strarted my CIW course with you last spring. Not long after starting my course I started having health problems which continued for the rest of 2006. As a result, I was unable to continue studying and feared I would never get my CIW certification. Now thankfully, I have been diagnosed and treated and I have begun my studying again thanks to the support I recieved from your staff. I cant tell you how happy I am just to be able to submit my TMA's again and start working towards my CIW certification with the help and support from Skillstrain. Thank you!

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This has been a month of real hardship, 3 deaths inside two weeks and changes at work - the pressure has been on.

It started when my fiancee's Gran became ill, and was rushed to hospital for surgery.Within 24 hours she never regained conciousness and passed away quietly. The funeral was set for last Wednesday and we of course attended, after the wake Louise and myself were hanging around town waiting to collect our two young children from nursery when we got a phone call.

My own Gran - a long time sufferer from alzheimers, was deteroirating fast, we rushed to the home to find my mother and uncles at her bedside. A frail shell of a person laid in the bed, unregognizable to me as my gran. We hung out a while with family but still had the children to collect. We departed, collected the kids and took them home so I could return to the rest home. Within seconds of arriving home we got the call - she'd gone.

The last on was the greatest shock of all, I work permanent nights at the moment in a supermarket - hence the career change - the only positive aspect of my current job is the people that we get to meet. My fiancee and I met through our jobs. Saturday night typically for me is sorting out a aisle devestated after frenzied Saturday afternoon shoppers, its hard physical graft and tough mentally to keep focused.

This Saturday was different in that my manager for the night recieved a paniced phone call mid-shift, Jim a character of immense proportions had just been found uncouncious covered in blood outside a friends house. Jim died two days later, he was 26. Eight years younger than myself.

Despite this terrible fortnight I have still manged to get through reading,labs and TMA's on the latest stage of my course. The things that have happened have given me an even greater push to not only complete my course but to finish it well and make the most of the time I have. Thanks to my course, I have focus and in turn have given my family focus on where we all want to be in a few years from now.

Joan, Isabella and Jim will all be missed.

Louise, Joshua and Madison we'll get there.

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AFTER BEING COMPLETELY COMPUTER ILLITERATE AND REALLY STRUGGLING WITH THE BOOKS, I KEPT ON GOING, AND AM NOW HAPPY TO SAY HAVE MANAGED TO HELP MY DAD DESIGN A WEB SITE! HE IS AS PLEASED AS I AM, SO THANKS TO ALL THE TUTORS WHO KEPT ME FOCUSED....!

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Obviously, this course has really assisted my knowledge about IT. I am now currently used to the PC, I can comfortably and independently work with a PC. This has added to my achivements in a very great way.

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For the last few months I've been very busy working, inspite of this I still manage and find my time to study and passed all my TMA. I did this because of faith, hardwork, discipline and determination.

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I feel that I have achieved more than I thought possible this month. I have just got a new job as a Teaching assistant, supporting children with special educational needs, in their ICT lessons. The knowledge I have gained so far in this course has been so valuable to me and has enabled me to gain new skills to pass onto children and young people. It feels great to be able to use what I know to help others, even though I'm still learning myself.

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This month I started the CIW web design course. Being in the building trade I have a bit of time on my hands at this time of year (rain stops play!). Since the 28th of last month I have submited 4 TMA's with only TMA03 having to be resubmitted! Considering the fact that until last month if something wasn't made of brick or timber I didn't know what to do with it, I feel quite chuffed!
My partner is on the last year of her degree and doing a full time job, so I am having to do the lions share of the housework at the mo' also!!!
Its all good stuff and the thought of working hard to ensure the kids have a good future has spurred her on for the last five years of study, so know its my turn!
Wish I had done it sooner! Thanks skillstrain

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Came from 62% to 100% & partner gave me a baby daughter named Isla & Iv'e done it for her & partner ISLA & SARAH-JANE Thanks to all the team as well

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With the knowledge that I have acquired so far in this course I managed to help my sister connect to the Internet as she was having problems with connecting. I also completed my first book of the course and I have already done two assignments in the second book

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I am currently working from 8.30 till 4.30 Monday to Friday and have little time to read through my documentation for my course. When I do have time to do the course I read as much as possible to gain a decent mark. I have just submitted my first assignment and received my mark this morning. The course that I am doing is a web design course and is something I am really looking into as a long term career. I am currently doing an apprentiship as an IT Technician. When I received my email this morning from skillstrain regarding my mark for my assignment I was really nervous as I thought that I May have to redo my assignment. When I opened the attachment to my mark, I was overjoyed to see that I had got 95% and am really looking forward to doing well on my chosen course.

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I have managed to put into practice some of the skills learned through this course in my current job, not only setting up a linux web server but also finding problems and solving them with a collegues SSH access to a CVS website for our annual report, (having had to teach myself how to use both CVS at nescforge to access the report and also LaTex in order to actualy write it). This involved a lot of coming to terms with using Linux on a daily basis which has gone so well I must say that I am now looking to run a linux computer at home. It has been a rather steep learning curve through March as I came to terms with this new information at work while trying to push on through my coursework but seem to have coped better than I thought I would.

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Hello I have been doing the CIW course for over a year now and have only achieved to get to section-1 part-b of the course.It was a very busy year for me in 2006 and I had to contend with moving home and moving jobs, not only that I had to put my course on hold because my computer broke.I told myself that in 2007 I will progress with my course work like never before but on Jan the 3rd I was made redundant so yet again the course was put on hold,what a great year this is turning out to be I said with disbeleive, I've already wasted a year and still on the first folder.
The end of Feb came and I had secured a job, great so before I was due to start my job I again started with the course finishing the first folder and flying through the next, we celebrated the birth of our daughter on the 13th of March but I was determind to carry on the course without another break and I am.I have achieved more in a month than I have in one year submiting at least a tma a week now and I know I won't slow down.It just goes to show that even with 2 kids and full time job you can achieve things if you put your mind to it.

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