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Better Than Minesweeper

A little while back, Eileen Brown from MS UK posted her experience with a new online distraction from MS Learning called, aptly enough, Are You Certifiable?

First off…this isn’t the typical online quiz game you’d prolly expect from MS. The stuff this thing throws at you are TOUGH! Unlike a real exam, you have unlimited time to look at a given question, but only 60 seconds to sift through the possible answers once you tell it “ready.” Some of the scenarios were as complex as items I have seen on real exams, without a doubt.

Over the course of a couple days, I ended up finishing the full IT Pro half of AYC. That was a grand total of 400 questions. Yes, there were shiny badges aplenty to be had.

And I’ve yet to see anyone even close to my final score of 152,720.

But that wasn’t what kept me going to the end. The fact is, AYC was an amazingly handy way to kickstart my brain while taking breaks from working on other stuff. During mid-morning breaks and lunch I’d run through AYC questions instead of dragging cards in Solitaire or wasting time on Facebook.

I found that when I got back to “real” work, I was able to chop through thorny issues like a hot knife through butter.

I chalk that up to the instant feedback (right or wrong), which let me know right away areas where I was weak, and where I wasn’t. On top of that, I learned almost 2 dozen things about SQL Server during the course of rolling through AYC. Stuff I’ve used in the field since. Things I’ve been able to bill people for.

Which is the whole point of an IT career. If you aren’t committed to constant learning and then turning that knowledge into solutions that make a difference, you might as well get out of the business now.

And if you’re gonna try your hand at some AYC, do yourself a favor…

Turn off the background music before you start trying to answer questions. Just trust me on that one.

|| posted by chris under business, game, it pro, timekiller || comments (3) || ||