Cloud Academy Team

Tech Skills Playbook

Thanks for landing on our first Tech Skills Playbook! This guide is intended to complement our Tech Skills Training Camp and guides you through our platform to maximize your learning experience. If you missed our last Tech Skills Training Camp, you can pre-register to get on the list for our next free event.

If you want to jumpstart your learning and dive right into our playbook, all you need to do is sign up for a 7-day free trial. You’ll get unlimited access to our learning paths, courses, certification prep exams, and our most popular hands-on labs, lab challenges, and lab playgrounds.

In this article, we’ll cover the following seven plays:

  1. Get prepared and stay on track
  2. Find a cloud certification learning path
  3. Get certified to keep cloud infrastructure safe and secure
  4. Learn the top 10 skills to land a job
  5. Get the real-world experience you need
  6. Push your skills to the next level
  7. Take some risks in a live cloud environment

Play 1: Get prepared and stay on track

Welcome to Day 1 of our Tech Skills Training Camp! Today’s play from our Tech Skills Playbook is focused on getting prepared and staying on track. Starting something new is hard, but once you get into a routine, it will be so much easier to stay motivated to hit your end goal. After a few weeks of your new routine, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how it becomes second nature.

Set yourself up for success

  1. Install the mobile app: Our app makes it easy for you to download Cloud Academy courses to learn while you’re offline. You can also use the app to cast your training directly to your TV using both iOS and Android. It’s simple. Just go the app, click the cast icon, and sit back and relax.
  2. Set a goal: You only have free access for 7 days, so we want you to make the most of it. Determine how many hours you can dedicate each day, and then stick to it.
  3. Schedule training reminders: We recently added training reminders into our platform to help keep you accountable. Simply go to your dashboard > click “Add training reminder” and boom — your time is booked.
  4. Find a learning path: Our learning paths are guided learning experiences that provide step-by-step training to build your technical knowledge and hands-on skills.

What are learning paths?

Learning paths are objective-driven and comprised of:

  • Courses: participate in video-based training to build your tech skills on industry-leading technologies
  • Exams and quizzes: take assessments to help you retain what you learned
  • Hands-on labs: learn step-by-step using actual accounts on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform
  • Lab challenges: troubleshoot complex scenarios without guidance using live environments
  • Lab playgrounds: explore and test your own ideas in sandboxed environments — without installing any software

We build the learning framework. Now you just need to log on, watch the courses, practice your skills with our live labs, and watch your tech skills catapult to the next level.

Play 2: Find a cloud certification learning path

Getting certified shows that you have some of the most in-demand (and profitable) skills as validated by one of the most recognizable entities in cloud computing. According to an AWS Salary Survey Report, 47% of those certified experienced a salary increase after earning a certification, and there’s no better time to get certified than right now.

The best preparation for certification exams is practical experience. Our certification training mixes video-based courses with quizzes, certification prep exams, and practical labs, so you’ll gain valuable experience using actual accounts on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Explore our cloud certification learning paths

AWS

Foundational
Associate
Professional

Azure

Fundamental
Associate
Professional

Google Cloud Platform

Associate
Professional

Play 3: Get certified to keep cloud infrastructure safe and secure

Now that the cloud is the new “norm,” today’s play is focused on certifications that help keep the cloud infrastructure safe and secure: Security and DevOps.

If you’ve already found a learning path that’s right for you, well done! Feel free to dive right into our dashboard to continue studying. If you’re still searching, then continue along our certification learning path journey. Finding a certification — and career path — that interests you is essential. When you’re interested in the material, you are more likely to stay engaged and maintain your motivation to earn the coveted certification.

Did you know…

The cost of a data breach has risen 12% over the past 5 years and now costs $3.92 million on average, according to a report from IBM Security. This increase is causing highly skilled security professionals to be in high demand. >>Read more.

The perception of DevOps and its role in the IT industry has changed over the last five years. Even though many believe that DevOps teams move too fast to handle security concerns, DevOps practices done right increase system security in the same way that continuous delivery increases stability. >>Read more.

Explore our security and DevOps learning paths

Security Certifications

DevOps Certifications

Explore other certifications

Still haven’t found a certification learning path that’s right for you? Feel free to explore all of our certifications or explore our Training Library.

Play 4: Learn the top 10 skills to land a job

Today’s play focuses on the top 10 skills to land a job. This list might surprise you, but according to CIO.com, programming languages make up 8 of the 10 top technical skills to get hired in 2020 — yes, 8 of the top 10! Here is the top 10 list in order:

  1. SQL
  2. Java
  3. Python
  4. Linux
  5. Javascript
  6. AWS
  7. C++
  8. C
  9. C#
  10. .NET

Want to know what’s great about this list? Cloud Academy offers learning paths, courses, and labs on 9 of 10 top skills — and you still have plenty of time to explore our extensive Training Library!

Explore our programming learning paths

Python

Java

SQL, .NET, and Javascript

Other programming languages

Play 5: Get the real-world experience you need

Today’s play is focused on getting you real hands-on experience by firing up a hands-on lab. Our labs are not “simulated” experiences — they are real cloud environments using actual accounts on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, Kubernetes, and much more. We have three very different types of labs: hands-on labs (guided), lab challenges (non-guided), and lab playgrounds (sandbox). Today we’re focusing on hands-on labs.

What are hands-on labs?

Hands-on labs are guided experiences to learn in live cloud environments with step-by-step guidance to practice your skills without getting stuck.

  • Build hands-on experience using real accounts
  • Solidify practical knowledge in a short amount of time
  • Facilitate knowledge retention and enable experimentation

Explore our hands-on labs

During the Tech Skills Training Camp, we have unlocked complimentary access to 165 hands-on labs. Here’s just a list a handful of the hands-on lab we have available this week:

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud Platform

Programming

DevOps

Security

Play 6: Push your skills to the next level

Today’s play is focused on pushing your skills to the next level in a live environment where full and complete instructions are not included.

Our labs are not “simulated” experiences — they are real cloud environments using actual accounts on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, Kubernetes, and much more. We have three very different types of labs: hands-on labs (guided), lab challenges (non-guided), and lab playgrounds (sandbox). This play we’re focusing on lab challenges.

What are lab challenges?

Lab challenges are non-guided skill validation to demonstrate problem-solving skills — basically, hands-on labs with the gloves off.

  • Validate your technical problem-solving skills in a real environment
  • Troubleshoot complex scenarios to practice what you learned
  • Develop production experience that translates into real-world expertise

Want to know the exciting part?

Like a high-intensity escape room, you will have less than one hour to demonstrate your problem-solving skills. You jump into an auto-provisioned cloud environment and are given a goal to accomplish. But unlike a typical escape room, you don’t have a friendly game master helping you along. There are no instructions, no hints. To pass, you’ll have a limited amount of time to complete the checks that inspect the state of your lab environment.

If you feel a little overwhelmed or stressed out, you might need more practice before taking the actual challenge, so we recommend that you take the guided hands-on labs first and work up to the lab challenges.

Explore our lab challenges

During the Tech Skills Training Camp, we have unlocked complimentary access to 18 lab challenges. Here’s the complete list of the lab challenges we made available this week:

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud Platform

Programming

DevOps

Play 7: Take some risks in a live cloud environment

This play is focused on taking risks and trying unfamiliar tools and commands in a live environment with lab playgrounds.

What are lab playgrounds?

Lab playgrounds provide a safe and secure sandbox environment for you to explore your own ideas, follow along with Cloud Academy courses, or answer your own questions — all without having to install any software on your local machine.

You can feel free to take risks and try unfamiliar tools and commands to learn more about working in a live environment — even if it means running into a dead end and needing to start the lab over.

  • Explore and experiment in live environments without a set of objectives or checks to complete
  • No software installations or account credentials needed — the system automatically launches all the necessary resources
  • Use for an extended duration with an average duration of four hours

Explore our lab playgrounds

During the Tech Skills Training Camp, we have unlocked complimentary access to 10 lab playgrounds. Here’s the complete list of the lab playgrounds we made available this week:

Amazon

Azure

Programming

DevOps

Cloud Academy