Short IT courses

I'm woking as a Business Analyst in a Software Company. I want to do some short IT courses over the next few months. Ideally I would want to do these courses by distance learning or in the evenings. Has anyone done any that they would recommend? I am a complete beginner to all things technical. I've had a look at the FAS college but I'm finding it difficult to figure out what courses are suitable for a beginner, they all seem to require previous knowledge.

Thanks.

What precisely do you mean by "IT courses"? This is very broad. It might help if you refine your focus a bit. What do you want to learn? What would be most beneficial to you personally and your career? What sort of IT based role would you be interested in doing? Would you be interested in doing high level (e.g. project management) or low level (e.g. software development, implementation) stuff for example? The more questions you ask yourself the easier it should become to identify suitable courses. Don't forget that there are lots and lots of free resources available on the web for learning about IT issues at all levels that might be useful. Also - there is no substitute for digging in and trying things out especially when it comes to programming and related activities.

My current role would be very business focused - including Project Mangement type duties. I think it would be beneficial if I had a better idea what the technical guys were talking about. I suppose HTML, XML and SQL would be things I want to learn more about. I have no ambition to start programming/developing I just want a broad understanding. There are no training courses available in house by my employer.

You dont need a training course for what you want, and most training courses in say SQL, XML etc are detailed, more so that you need.

Just search on the web, you'll find plenty to give an overview of the different technologies without the heavy detail.

e.g. search for terms like "xml overview" and you'll get links like this...http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/XMLAndDatabases.htm which gives a fairly ok description on xml

Yes - there are lots of online tutorials on that sort of stuff that might do the trick. This site also gives a good overview of some of these technologies. To get more out of any of these online courses you should play around with the stuff. That's the best way to learn and understand new technologies and tools.

Thanks Peter.

Thanks Clubman.

I'll have a look.