>> Do you ever get the sense that there are
so many resources out there for learning about Azure,
and maybe you don't know what they are or even where to find them?
Do you ever wonder if there might be ways to learn about
Azure that could fit your learning style better?
Maybe there are some tips and tricks out there that
help you utilize these resources even better,
that can help you learn even faster.
My name is April Edwards,
and I'm your host for the Azure Learning Resources Series.
We're going to answer all these questions
and so much more for you.
Join me on a guided tour of the
Azure learning resources available to you.
Let's head off to our first destination.
>> Now, let's visit Virtual Training Days.
>> Hi, I'm Garrett Bundy.
I'm a Global Director,
part of our Microsoft Trainer Team.
I have a team of 16 trainers spread across the globe
that all support our Microsoft Virtual Training Day events.
>> Walk us through the experience of someone attending
their first Microsoft Virtual Training Day.
>> When you come to a virtual training day for the first time,
you've probably found us because you went to
a local events page on the Azure site,
and you found these great things called a
Microsoft Virtual Training Day.
These events spread across all of our cloud platforms,
whether you're looking for something with
Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365,
or Security, or Power Platform or Dynamics,
any of those platforms,
we have a Microsoft Virtual Training Day event for you.
You've probably registered for the event,
and then you show up the day of the event,
and you can attend any of that.
We have events from fundamentals level
all the way up through advanced level content.
In this event, you'll find content
that is led from our Microsoft Technical Trainers.
But in addition to being able to
watch the event and be a part of it,
we make sure that you can have
a live Q&A session with
technical subject matter experts for that event,
so you can get your questions answered while you're in attendance.
>> What makes Microsoft Virtual Training Days great?
>> What makes training days great?
Well, like I mentioned before,
we have all the different Microsoft platforms
available in the virtual training days motion.
You can get Microsoft Azure,
Microsoft 365, Security, Dynamics,
Power Platform, whatever it is that you're focused
on in your career or whatever you're wanting to learn.
We have a virtual training day that can cover that.
You could definitely build up your skills in your career field.
Or perhaps you just want to explore the range and
the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud products and services,
we have events that can help you with that.
Or maybe you're looking for a way to
jump-start a new technical initiative
that your company has or adopt new ways of working.
These are just some of the things you can find by
attending one of our Microsoft Virtual Training Days.
>> What is unique about Microsoft Virtual Training Days?
>> What is unique about virtual training days is
really that we not only allow you to have
an instructor-led event where
our Microsoft technical trainers are
imparting great knowledge to you,
but we also give you the opportunity to have
a live Q&A with our moderator staff.
We staff each one of these events with
a subject matter expert that is
there in real-time to answer
your questions about the content that you're receiving.
>> What are some tips and tricks to
the Microsoft Virtual Training Day experience?
>> If you're looking for tips and tricks on how to get the
most out of your virtual training day experience,
the first is make sure you're there on time.
These are real events that are happening in real-time and we want
to make sure you get the full experience
by attending the entire thing.
The other part is, there's live Q&A moderators that
are there answering your questions so if
you have a question on something you see,
we encourage that interaction.
You get far more out of the experience when you interact with
the other folks on the other side than
if you're just sitting there watching the content.
>> What's one thing most people don't know
about Microsoft Virtual Training Days?
>> One thing a lot of people don't know
about virtual training day events,
is these events are truly global in nature.
We offer these events in eight different spoken languages,
but we also offer you the opportunity to have
up to 20 different caption languages.
Let's say you're watching an event in
English but your native language is more Italian,
or your native language is German,
we offer you the ability to see the event in English but
have the captioning file displayed in your native tongue.
Well, if you attend one of our Azure fundamentals courses,
whether it's Azure or AI or Data Fundamentals,
we actually offer you the opportunity to sit
the exam associated with that course at no cost to you.
Simply by attending the course,
gaining the knowledge you need to be able to sit for the exam,
and then using that in combination with
the learning path content on Microsoft Learn,
we prepare you to possibly take the exam
and we give you the opportunity to do that at no cost.
>> How do Microsoft Virtual Training Days
enable people to succeed in what they're trying to do?
>> Virtual Training Days can help you
succeed in what you're trying to do because
we offer you this opportunity to
start at the real fundamentals level.
We have the Azure Fundamentals, Azure AI,
Azure Data Fundamentals,
all of these courses are available,
and you can really start your journey with
the Microsoft Cloud in this virtual training day,
but then we offer you the ability to
go deeper into the technology.
We offer courses like, if you're a developer,
we have DevOps with GitHub, just to name one.
There's plenty of opportunity for you
to start at the fundamental level,
and really advance through the higher-level courses.
>> Our next stop is at Microsoft Learn.
>> I'm Judy McNeil,
Senior Program Manager on the Learn Content Team.
>> When someone comes to Microsoft Learn for the first time,
what do they find there?
>> Well, Learn has over 1000 courses,
and we cover a wide variety of topics including Azure,
AI, software development, lots of topics.
You can start with one of
the popular learning paths like Azure Fundamentals,
or you could jump to the browse page and use
search or filter to focus on the thing that's important to you.
You can also explore Microsoft certification paths,
where the Learn content is there to help
you get ready for certification exams.
>> What makes Microsoft Learn a great learning destination?
>> Microsoft Learn modules are concise,
meaning you can learn a skill over lunch.
You learn directly from
product experts and the best part is it's free.
You can get started with no account required.
>> What's unique about Microsoft Learn as a learning destination?
>> We give you curated training to
help you prepare for certification exams.
We have great integration with other learning resources like Docs,
Q&A, Learn TV, and you can practice
your new skills in our Sandbox Environment that is totally free.
It uses real Azure,
so you're working with real resources
the exact same way you would with Azure.
>> At Microsoft Learn,
are there structures or concepts people should know?
>> Learn is structured into modules that are
about 25-50 minutes of training.
Each module is designed to be stand-alone.
You could jump into any topic at any level.
We also have curated learning paths that give
you a logical order to take for the modules.
That connects the skills together to
help you gain a deeper level of expertise and knowledge.
You earn achievements and
badges as you complete modules and learning paths.
The fun thing about it is you can create
collections of content and
share your lists with your friends and your co-workers.
>> What's one thing most users don't know about Microsoft Learn?
>> The practice environments.
They let you experiment with Microsoft products.
You can use them to explore Azure and
Dynamics with no cost and no risk.
If you've ever had that moment where you're,
should I try this?
Try this. Our environments time out and they clean up themselves.
>> How does Microsoft Learn help people succeed?
>> New modules are published almost every day.
Tell us what you're interested in,
we'll recommend content that matches your goals.
A lot of our content planning is done using job task analysis,
that's where we interview
the top industry practitioners about how they work.
Most of our modules are based on real-world job tasks.
>> Next, let's visit Tech Community.
>> Hi, I'm Anna Chu.
I am the community lead for Microsoft Tech Community.
>> When someone comes to Tech Community for
the first time, what can they expect?
>> The Microsoft Tech Community is
an online community where you can find product news from
our experts at Microsoft as well as
a bunch of really awesome individuals
who are really giving their time,
volunteering their time to answer your questions and to help you,
and they can include MVPs or just someone who's just like you,
just learning about all that different products and technologies.
>> What makes Tech Community a great learning destination?
>> Definitely, the people that power the community,
and they include Microsoft engineers.
They also include people who are IT professionals, developers,
and users, and they're all there
to find out more about our products.
To also receive technical guidance as well as to give it
and ultimately to get support and
encouragement from other people just like them.
It can be a pretty lonely place right now to actually learn,
so we really want to provide a community that
allows people to connect and learn from each other.
>> What makes Tech Community unique
compared to other learning destinations?
>> What is unique about the Tech Community?
Definitely the human element, for sure.
We run Amazon in the community and
that's a really great example of how we
provide access to real people and show things in practice.
The Tech Community got a lot
of great deep technical content from our blogs.
It gives you real insight to the people
preparing the product teams who are
listening to your feedback and
implementing them to create the features that you want.
One of the things that we hope at Tech Community is,
and I certainly think it already is,
it gives you that real human-to-human connection.
It's a completely digital destination,
but at least you can get insight into the people behind
the Microsoft products as well as
those who were using it in the community.
>> What structures and concepts are at
Tech Community that are important to know?
>> There are some amazing sections in
the Tech Community that we call community hubs
that like little microcosms
into the products that we have and programs as well.
For example, one of
our most popular humanity hubs is the Microsoft Teams,
community hub in the Tech Community,
and that contains all the discussion forums,
blogs from the product team is also
a community blog where MVPs regularly blog that.
Also is a portal to other useful resources that way you
can provide official feedback to the Microsoft Teams team.
If you just want to stay right in
that community hub specifically for Microsoft Teams, you can.
But the Tech Community is
home to hundreds of these community hubs,
ranging from Azure to
Public Sector to Security and Compliance is always
different places where you can spend a lot of time connecting
with your community who are also passionate about those topics.
>> What's non-obvious about how to use Tech Community?
>> The Tech Community is really great place for you
to personalize your experience.
One of the things that you can immediately
do is join a particular community hub.
By simply joining a community hub,
it actually powers your feed.
Certainly personalize it to your heart's content.
There's so many things to do on the Tech Community
because it is growing every single week, every single month.
We're only adding more and more community hubs there,
so your dashboard is a really great portal for you
to just hone in on the things that you care about
if that's how you want to process all the information
because it is becoming a bit of a Firehose now.
Now that we're on-boarding
more and more teams to come on to the Tech Community.
>> What's something most people don't know about Tech Community?
>> One thing that's interesting about
the Tech Community is that we do have
ways that you can really showcase your expertise.
For example, if you're a new member of the Tech Community,
then you will have a particular rank that says
new member or new contributor when you first joined.
Just so you can signal to people,
"Hey, I'm new here."
But there are certainly people who spent a lot of
time in the Tech Community who
have specific tiles like esteemed contributor or things like that.
That gives you a little bit of recognition into how long
these people are intended to sharing
the expertise and being involved in the Tech Community.
But also, we pay special recognition
to people who have earned MVP certs.
MVP stands for Microsoft Valued Professional and these are
people who have been absolutely invested in the community.
They have been prolific in social media,
on Tech Community, and a variety of different formats.
Whether they are also delivering learning courses, writing blogs,
things like that, and delivering user group meetings as well,
whether they were in-person vacuum today or now virtual.
We really want to give people who are MVPs
that additional recognition and you'll see them with
that little green ring around their profile picture,
and anyone who is an aspiring MVP
can certainly rest assured that older contributions,
if they want to let that be an advocate for their position to
become a future MVP know that your contributions in
the Tech Community can be
automatically logged for your application to become one.
Being an MVP is an awesome privilege.
You get information from
the product teams that can be confidential,
but you also get
an opportunity to shape the future of our products.
So that's really awesome.
>> How does Tech Community help people succeed?
>> We're saving tips, guidance,
and learning best practices from other members is really
what makes the Tech Community an awesome place to learn.
The world is just changing so quickly and unpredictably,
and with learning becomes
such a virtual experience now it can be very isolating.
So knowing that there are others who are also in
a similar situation and have found a solution is
supercomputing and reassurance of those in
the community and helps him banish impulse syndrome a little bit.
>> Our next stop is at LinkedIn Learning.
>> Hi, I'm Sharon Bennett.
I'm a Senior IT instructor with LinkedIn Learning.
>> When someone comes to LinkedIn Learning for the first time,
what can they expect?
>> Well, they're going to find over 15,000 courses.
That's a lot of courses.
To get started the best thing to do is search for a topic
or you can use one of our curated LinkedIn Learning Paths.
>> What's something non-obvious
about how to use LinkedIn Learning?
>> When you first pop into LinkedIn Learning,
if you're searching for a learning path,
you can work through that learning path,
as you complete it and
as you complete the courses within that learning path,
you will receive a certificate of completion.
>> What's something many people don't
know about LinkedIn Learning?
>> The one thing you may not know about
LinkedIn Learning is you may already have access to it.
For example, here in Ontario,
all post-secondary institutions already have access,
and we know a lot of employers
purchase LinkedIn Learning for their employees,
but the employees don't even know about it.
[MUSIC]
>> I hope you've enjoyed our tour across Azure learning resources.
If you're looking to engage with any of the resource,
please visit this video,
please check the text in this video's description.
If you haven't already,
check out Part 2 of our tour to see
more learning destinations not featured
this video helping you get better with Azure.
Enjoy your learning and see you next time.
>> [MUSIC]