I found Tech Learning Collective recently through their membership in the Electronic Frontier Alliance and jumped right in to many of their great learning opportunities. The System Administration and Operation Basics workshop is a great example. The instruction was very thorough and responsive to where students are in the tech learning process. After the session I now feel like I have a strong foundation of understanding that I can build upon in setting up tech for my business.

I’m excited to continue learning with the Tech Learning Collective team and recommend them to anyone seeking to understand the complex tech world we live in every day.

When I attended Tech Learning Collective’s “Securing Email” PGP workshop, I was expecting more of a simple how-to, but the instructor was detailed and informative, and went deeper to show us what encryption really is, how keys work, and where to find more information. The workshop was thorough but unintimidating and the instructor did a good job of checking the group’s temperature and staying in tune with our respective paces of learning and skill set. Also I really appreciate the femme-friendly communications and price structure.

I found out about Tech Learning Collective through an Electronic Frontier Foundation article about an event they where hosting regarding cybersecurity.

What I really liked about it, is that they where very supportive to newbies (like me) and I wasn’t too overwhelmed during the event. They made it as simple as they could. The communication between the audience and the presenter (and the teacher’s assistant) was really nice too. They tried to answer as many questions as possible and kept going for almost two hours after the event was supposed to end.

Among other things I learned a lot about the Tor Browser, brute-force attacks, and how password hashing works.

Teaching a technical class from the terminal is a difficult proposition when you have students coming in from all over the world. The instructor of “Exploring Cyberspace: Network Sniffing and Scanning” did a commendable job getting a sense of the (virtual) room and talking at our level. Their task is probably helped by the fact that the Tech Learning Collective’s course offerings have titles and a mission that engage curious minds.

Before taking the class, I had some passing experience with one or two of the tools the instructor introduced. I would have considered myself a beginner. The instructor managed to take us into deep waters by illustrating small steps, making sure we understood the fundamental terminology, and asking us lots of questions. The scope of the class was thoughtfully limited—enough to make sure we could swim but also realize there is much more to learn. Quite an accomplishment in under two hours!