Aidan O'Rourke Photographer Website Publisher Tutor

Review of PHP training course by Highlander

Written by Aidan O'Rourke
2006-11-10

This article is an independent review of the training course in PHP MySQL which I attended in London from 18 to 20 September 2006, organised by Highlander Training. For all enquiries about Highlander's courses, please contact them directly via their website www.highlander.co.uk.

There are many reasons to learn PHP MySQL. Millions of pages every day are served using this winning combination of open source software. The premier blogging tool WordPress uses PHP and MySQL, and there are many plug-ins written in PHP to extend its functionality.

My own photo portfolio site http://www.aidan.co.uk makes use of PHP MySQL. It was developed in late 2003 to my specification, and has proved to be very reliable and effective.

I didn't know any PHP when my site was first set up, and I picked up a certain amount through doing routine amendments to the site. I decided it was time do a course in it, and I found Highlander's courses after doing a search in Google for PHP MySQL training courses in the UK.

The course fee was 795 plus VAT and the venue was in London at Highlander's training centre in Omnibus Workspace, on North Rd, Islington. I travelled from Manchester and stayed in a hotel near St Pancras Station and Kings Cross. It's just within walking distance of those stations, or you can take the tube to Caledonian Road on the Northern Line.

The room was equipped with desks, student computers connected to a network and a digital projector.

Knowledge, expertise, talent and enthusiasm

No matter how well organised any college or training provider is, the effectiveness of the course depends on the knowledge, expertise, talent and enthusiasm of the instructor and it was soon clear our instructor Toby Dussek wasn't lacking in any of these qualities.

He spoke in a clear, demonstrative, theatrical manner, making use of gesture, and rhetoric. He had the presentation style of a knowledgeable and experienced BBC weatherman.

As an ex-instructor myself - I taught modern languages and EFL - I know that another important procedure which not all instructors bother with, is to go over the aims and objectives of the course, and summarise the material to be covered. This was the first thing he did, and he also asked us to describe our own projects, so that our particular goals could be incorporated into the work.

With the preliminaries completed, we launched into the first stages of our three day course in PHP MySQL, something of a roller coaster for me, as I am not a programmer by choice.

Thirsty work

By skilfully managing the context, being aware of the level of difficulty and keeping an eye on the pace, he was able to take us through the inportant initial stages which included simple PHP statements, calling a database, and laying the foundations of a simple web application.

The tuition, which ran from 9.30am to 4pm, was broken up with morning and afternoon breaks, and for lunch we were taken to the pub at the other end of the centre, where we had a buffet lunch.

The food was good, and on the first two days, plentiful, though it would have been nice to have drink refills, as writing PHP code can be thirsty work!

Toby always planned the afternoon work to be a simple self-study task, building on work completed during the morning.

On the third day, I was finding the afternoon work fairly demanding. Without having to raise my hand or do any prompting, he came over to me and suggested discreetly that I might prefer to study the finished code, which he had conveniently paced on the network for me to copy and peruse.

An awareness of different levels of abiltiy is a key quality which not all instructors demostrate or act upon.

By the end of the course, I had picked up a great deal of information which I've been able to put to direct use on my site. One key thing I've learned is that even the most experienced programmer needs to debug the code and sometimes it can take quite a bit of effort. I'm not the only person who misses out a semi-colon or single quote.

Foot in the door

I wish I could wave a magic wand and become a PHP MySQL whizz-kid overnight. The Highlander course has at least wrenched open the door into the world of PHP MySQL, and has allowed me to put one foot in it. With further study and perhaps a follow-up course, I hope to learn enough to be able to take more and more control over my own website.

The fee included a copy of the latest PHP MySQL training book, which arrived a few days after the end of the course.

It would have been nice to have it to refer to during the course, though the material covered was entirely independent of any book, relying on materials displayed on screen and copied to the individual computers via the network. We were able to copy the code onto our own computers for study later.

All in all I would highly recommend the Highlander PHP MySQL training course with this instructor.

It was well-planned, and excellently presented. The training facilities were good and the refreshments were satisfactory.

It would have been nice if the course could have been held in Manchester, the cost of accommodation in London was an extra expense. But just as some students will travel to the remotest part of Tibet to study with the wisest guru, it was worth the trek to Islington to study with instructor Toby Dussek.

For more details about Highlander's courses, visit www.highlander.co.uk

2006-11-10

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