Some technicians I meet don’t have the time or money to go to all the trainings they would like to. And as a successful technologist you should never stop learning and all these great technology will never stop evolving.
So wouldn’t it be nice if there is a place were you can study in your own pace when you have time and for FREE?? But there is! Haven’t you seen the Virtual Academy?
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
This is a perfect place to study and learn new things, increase your skills and try technology that are not your main area of expertise. Make sure to build your Learning plan to keep your skills up to date.
On the first page you can browse the content by Topic or Products
Lets dig into the Product Windows, here you will find trainings for Windows 8 and Windows 7
One of the most popular trainings are Windows 8 Security Insights
Add it to your Learning Plan by Hover Add to My Learning Plan and check all Learning Plans you want to add this course to and click Add
At the top right you will see the Course you just added
And at My Dashboard you will find your points, your MVA ranking, your country’s ranking, what trainings you have completed and in progress. At this page you can also create new training plans
Lets start a course, the courses are compiled out of documents, URLs, videos etc. after you have seen or read all the information it is time for the self assessment (do not cheat – it will not help your skills 
)
and when your have completed the course, successfully
Tip! Subscribe to the RSS feed with newest courses: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/RSS.aspx?type=newestcourses
Other Learning Resources
Another great resource for learning is when you enter TechNet and press Learn
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb291022
I personally love the Virtual labs. I use it every once and a while when I need to try something out and don’t have a computer where I can test it. The labs are risk-free, simple to use, you have ~90 minutes to complete your training, and no complex setup or installation.
Hit Virtual Labs and select a lab, hit the Lab URL
and click Launch Lab
It will ask you run an application, just to get the best experience. The Lab will open up in a new window and the environment is being setup in the background. After a minute or so you will have two windows; one for the Lab manual and the other the Hyper-V computers that you will need for this lab. It is really simple to use, just switch between the computer on the right and Start, Stop and Pause as you wish.
How do you keep yourself up to date? If you have other training tips, we would like to hear them.
Happy training!
DeployWindows 