Welcome to this course on the comp to A-plus to 201001 certification exam.

Now, this certification is considered the first certification that anyone who wants to enter the
information

technology industry needs to study for and earn, because it's going to provide you with a great
foundation

and baseline knowledge across the various areas of the technology landscape.

Now, the CompTIA A+ certification is the industry standard for establishing your career inside
the

IT industry.

This is because the A+ certification is designed to validate your basic knowledge of the role of
an

information technology support technician.

Now, this certification is designed to test your knowledge of a technician who has about nine
months

of experience in the field.

But in reality, most people start this certification with no prior experience in it and use it as a

way to get their foot in the door and get their first job.

Now, if your brand new to it, then you should get yourself a good textbook or video series to
learn

all of the information that's tested on the exam.

This course is not designed to do that for you.

It is not designed to be a textbook replacement and it's not designed to replace a full video course

that's going to cover each and every one of the objectives on the exam.

Instead, this course is designed to help you apply the knowledge that you learned in one of those
courses

and being able to help you pass your A+ exam on the first attempt.
We're going to spend a lot of time talking about test taking because for most of you, this is the
first

certification exam you have ever taken.

And so I want to make sure you're ready for it, because it's a lot different than the test you took

in high school or college.

Now, before we dive into the course materials for this course, let's talk a little bit about what

this course is and what we're going to cover and what we want.

First, this course is an exam preparation course.

As such, I'm going to spend the entire next section of the course going through videos and
teaching

you my five test, taking tips to help boost your score on exam day.

Now, because this course is focused on exam preparation, I'm not going to teach you all of the
information

you need to pass the exam.

Like I said before, you should already have read a textbook or taken a full online course that
covers

each and every detail of all of the domains for the exam.

Instead, this course is really focused on practice exams and providing you the tips and tricks to
help

increase your score, help you calm down and not have fear against the certification exam.

We want to make sure you got the practice you need before you pay the big dollars to take that
certification

exam.

Then we're going to move into the next section of the course where I'm going to give you two
full length

practice exams.
Now, these exams each are going to have 90 questions and they're going to give you 90 minutes
to complete

them.

These practice exams are designed to be as close in content and style to the real exam as
possible.

But please note that these are not exam dumps.

Now, if you're not familiar with the term exam dumps, that means somebody going in, taking the
exam,

remembering the questions, writing them down and giving them to you.

That's not what that is.

What this means is that come test day, you're going to get different questions than the ones I give

you, But they're going to be testing the same content.

They're going to be asking the same things in different ways.

So if you've bought this course thinking you're going to get all the answers to the exam, you're
not

because this isn't an exam dump.

If you simply memorize my questions and answers, you are probably going to fail the exam
because you're

not understanding what the concepts are.

Instead, you need to use these practice exams to identify the areas that you may need to restudy,

and you want to make sure you understand why the answer to each question is correct, because
that's

how you're going to learn from it, because on the exam they are going to be worded differently.

The next section you're going to reach in the course is going to be focused on the performance
based

questions or pbks, as it calls them.

Now, on the real exam, you're going to get between 3 to 5 of these questions, and students
lovingly

refer to them as simulations.

Now, because our system doesn't support simulations, we're going to instead teach you how to
answer

these types of questions by going through these job tasks in video lessons, we're going to spend
some

time on motherboards, wireless network connections, mobile device configuration, some

command line

tools, and even how to configure a raid array, because these are common areas that I see
simulations

and performance based questions come up on the real certification come test day.

Now, again, these simulations are really important because they prove to employers that you can
not

only answer questions on the exam, but you can also perform a job function of a support
specialist,

a field service technician, a desktop support analyst, or a helpdesk support technician.

This is what sets the A-plus exam apart.

These practical exams and these practical simulations that you're going to have to answer.

So now that I've gotten you excited about the A-plus exam, I need to take a small detour in the
course

and introduce myself and share with you the four most important tips to help you learn better
during

our time together.

First.

My name is Jason Dion and I am a college professor and the lead instructor at Dion Training
Solutions.

I've been working in the I.T. and cybersecurity field for over two decades for organizations both
large
and small.

I got my first certification back in 1999 when I earned my first CompTIA A-plus.

This is back when I was running a computer repair business down in Miami, and all of our
technicians

were A-plus certified over my 20 years in the industry.

I've worked on individual customers.

Computers, run large I.T. organizations that did installation operations and maintenance for over
10,000

computers.

And I've even worked in the information security and cybersecurity portion of our industry.

So I'm not just an instructor, but I'm also an experienced computer technician who's helped over
100,000

students pass their certification exams on their first attempt.

So when I talk about these test taking techniques, trust me, they work.

Follow what I'm going to teach you and you're going to increase your score on the exam by a lot
of points.

Now, rest assured, if you're following my tips and tricks, you study the material in your textbook

or your video course and you use my practice exams, you're going to be able to earn your A-plus
certification.

You are in good hands with us.

All right.

I know I covered a lot of stuff so far.

But before we jump into the course materials, I need to cover my four big tips for success in this

course.

First, every single video in this course has the ability to turn on closed captions.

Each video is captioned by a real human to ensure accuracy.

And this allows you to read along with the course if you need to.

I have a lot of students who speak English as their second language and they really love having
these

captions playing along with my videos to help aid in their learning.

If you want to turn on closed captions, simply click on the CC button in the bottom of your video
player.

My second tip is about playback speed.

Some of my students say I talk too fast and others say I talk too slow.

Either way, though, you get to control the speed of instruction by clicking on that one x button in

the bottom of the video player.

If you want me to teach faster, simply select 1.25 x or 1.5 x.

If you want me to teach slower, simply click 0.75 x or 0.5 X faster or slower.

The choice is yours.

My third tip, and probably one of the most important tips is about our student support group.

We have a student support group set up with thousands of other students who are learning the
comp,

CompTIA, A-plus curriculum and other I.T. cybersecurity and project management certifications
through

any of our courses.

If you'd like to join the fun, it's free to do.

And you just head over to Facebook.com slash groups, slash don on training and request to join
this

private group.

In this group, we answer your questions, put out additional free content and help support each
other

through our IT careers.

Also, if you ask a question there, you're going to get an answer within just a few minutes most of

the time, because again, we have thousands of other students, both past and present, who are
joining

in the conversations there.

So if you're on Facebook, I highly recommend joining the group today.

The fourth and final tip I have for you is to treat our practice exams just like you would on the
real

exam.

For each practice exam, in this course, you're going to get timed and it has the ability for you to

mark questions for review.

After learning our test taking techniques in this course, I want you to put them to use in the
practice

exams so you can get comfortable using them.

After all, the real measure of success for you in this course is whether or not you're going to pass

the real exam come test day.

Now, with all of the introductions behind us, let's get started learning all about the exam and how

it breaks down into the five domains of hardware, mobile devices, networking, virtualization and

cloud computing and troubleshooting.

All of these things.