Wednesday, August 30, 2006

ACM, Safari and the Professional Development Center

I found a gem. This is the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery. This association has a yearly membership of less than $100 and with this you get access to over 1000 online books, including the O'Reilly series and over 500 online courses.

I've enrolled in about 5 different courses and any one of these would have cost hundreds of dollars each if I had enrolled in one of the online college degree services or other online computer courses.
With this yearly membership you get full access to the Safari collection of books as well.

I am currently enrolled on the full OOAD, Object Oriented Analysis & Design curriculum which contains 6 different courses, gradiently walking you through from basic OO concepts all the way through detailed UML diagrams. Every course contains "Pre" and "Post" examinations so you if you already are an expert at a subject, the course is customized to fit what you still need to work on based on your "Pre" test results. Then you must get over 80% passing rate for you to be considered "complete" with any course. You are directed back to the exact point you missed and you can clear up any misunderstood words and re-study.

Definitely an "A+" for ACM and the Professional Development Center.