I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik

eneels01@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik
>

Who's going to recognize a "Certified Internet Webmaster"? The title is
worthless unless it is widely recognized.

Better is to put together a good portfolio (which you'll need anyway)
and market yourself.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

eneels01@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out?

Cool! I'm now thinking of a career change from web technology to
nursing. I figure I can learn the Latin I need from an online tutorial
somewhere (I hear IpsoDog has a good one) and the rest of the job I'll
probably pick up pretty quickly because I've been to hospitals and
doctors' offices before. Besides, I've seen nurses on TV and it seems
pretty easy. I'll think I'll go ahead and treat my first patient today
or tomorrow (and maybe post about the results in alt.nursing.critique,
or in c.i.w.a.nursing if I get stuck). And there's always the definitive
reference online at the N3C...

;-)

--
John
Pondering the Web address of the Nimble Nursing Nimrod Consortium

On Aug 29, 4:12 am, eneel...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik

Okay... so how fast can you cram 15 years of experience?

Not to discourage, but you're talking complicated stuff and a lot that
can go wrong. Now if you are hosting a client, they're not going to
wait around while you figure out how to fix something. Just like being
a nurse: you need to know your stuff before you're allowed anywhere
near a patient.

Best way to learn is to practice, and play with the technology. There
are no certificates that can achieve this! Get yourself a web server,
setup a couple of sites... play! You'll learn far more that way.

BTW... did you really mean Web Master? As in... hosting... servers...
networks... software... Web Designers make web sites, Web Developers
write programs for the WWW and Web Masters run & manage platforms for
Web Developers and Web Designers to publish on.

xM

On 29 Aug, 04:12, eneel...@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik

There are just no good qualifications in "web stuff". The few that are
good (Cisco networking, Sun Certified Java) are pretty high-end.

CIW isn't a good qualification, but it's not a really bad one. It's
also the only one that has _any_ (albeit little) brand recognition by
employers. So if you don't have to pay to get it, and you learn some
other things too, then it won't actually hurt you. However it's far
from a path to instant riches. It won't teach you much either.

M$oft certification is a joke.

The over-riding "qualification" for web designers is a portfolio of
previous work. You _must_ have this. out your favourite charity
or something.

If you want to learn things, these newsgroups (esp. c.i.w.a.h) are one
of the few accurate resources around. There are any number of "web
tutorials" around, but most are badly inaccurte. As to books, then the
O'Reilly "Head First" series (Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML) is
about the only trustworthy one worth spending money on, followed by
Lie & Bos' "Cascading Style Sheets".

SpaceGirl wrote:

> Web Designers make web sites, Web Developers write programs for the
> WWW and Web Masters run & manage platforms for Web Developers and Web
> Designers to publish on.

And then there's those who do all of the above We're the ones who
tend to be graphically challenged, but just about cope.

--
Dylan Parry
http://electricfreedom.org | http://webpageworkshop.co.uk

The opinions stated above are not necessarily representative of
those of my cats. All opinions expressed are entirely your own.

Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> wrote in
news:j4ednQHz96_veknbnZ2dnUVZ_vqpnZ2d@comcast.com:

> eneels01@gmail.com wrote:
>> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
>> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
>> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik
>>
>
> Who's going to recognize a "Certified Internet Webmaster"? The title
> is worthless unless it is widely recognized.

As someone who holds the Master CIW certification I can say: Jerry's
right. Actually having the certification as meant nothing, careerwise,
as evidenced by the fact that whenever it did come up in a job
interview, I had to explain what it was. Despite what the CIW people
say about it being "the largest vendor-neutral certification", it means
nothing unless people recognize it as widely as say, MCSD or RHCP, etc.

That being said, I would still recommend someone new work their way up
through the CIW certifications as a means toward learning and getting
independent verification that you've learned this stuff.

Associate CIW is basically the same as the i-Net+ from CompTia and
contains a lot of very important background on the networking &
protocols of the web.

CIW Designer is a more hands-on kind of thing, learning actual
production of sites. It covers a lot of really basic stuff and, for me,
was actually a lot easier than the Associate CIW test.

Master CIW Designer is more of the same, but covers E-Commerce as well.
There's some playing around with databases and server-side programming,
but not a lot.

I had planned on doing all the CIW certs but by the time I got the
Master CIW I pretty much decided it was all worthless in terms of
increasing my employment prospects so I decided not to waste my time.


> Better is to put together a good portfolio (which you'll need anyway)
> and market yourself.

Definitely. In the web world, starting out is hard and the only way to
get anywhere is to have a portfolio of examples which show your work.

After a while, work will come from word-of-mouth, and none of those
people will care about a CIW cert, either.



--
Karl Groves
http://www.8pistons.com
http://www.thehotrodclassifieds.com
http://www.grayscalecms.com
http://www.karlcore.com

<eneels01@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1188357156.259307.116600@d55g2000hsg.googlegr oups.com...
> I'm beginning to make a career change from nursing to web technology.
> I'm attempting to become an associate level Certified Internet
> Webmaster. Is this the right path to start out? Erik
>
As others have pointed out, you need experience and a portfolio more than
certification.
But why not build on your medical background, and partner with some
designers and software folks to offer specialized website and intranet
development services to physician groups, medical offices, small medical
equipment companies, etc.?
That would differentiate you, provide real value to potential customers, and
make you productive immediately while you learn coding, design, etc.

Alex