Ben’s Tech Blog

It’s been a little while since I’ve udpated my blog, mainly becuase I’ve been busy with work and studying. I passed the Exchange admin exam yesterday (70-284 - Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003) and I’ve got a few days to breath before I start on my next exam: 70-293 - Planning and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure. As usual, I’ve created a Mind Manager map to create notes against:

70-293 Objectives Mind Map

Passing the 70-284 exam has given me the MCSA:Messaging status, and I have 2 more exams to take to complete the MCSE. Free time? What’s that?

I passed 70-294 today (Planning, Implementing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Infrastructure) with a score of 966, which I’m happy with.  Next up is 70-284 (Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003).  Although I’m going to have a break for a week or so, I’ve imported the 70-284 objectives into MindManager so that I’m ready to jump into it; you can grab the map from here:

70-284 Objectives Mind Map 

I’ve just started studying for the 70-294 MCSE exam (Planning, Implementing & Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Infrastructure).  I’m taking the same approach as I did for the 70-291 exam (that I passed last week) by  mapping out the exam objectives into MindManager and creating notes around that structure. 

I managed to copy, manipulate, and paste the objectives from here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-294.asp into mind manager.  I thought I’d post the map (without any notes) up here so that others can use the template to make notes against; after all, making your own notes is far more effective than reading someone elses.  You can download the map here: 70-294 Objectives Mind Map.

I’ve also posted an image of the map (click below).

Some colleagues of mine (Ant and Gary) have been using Mind Manager as a way to brainstorm or map out projects into a logical format. I recently read a blog entry from Gary where he mentioned that he’d used Mind Manager to document the ITIL Service Management principles. I’m planning to do the ITIL foundation certificate so I thought it would be a nice study reference. With that thought in my mind, I realised that mind mapping could be a great way to compile study notes.

I’m currently studying for the Microsoft 70-291 exam, so I installed Mind Manger on Thursday night and started to play around with it. So far I have mapped out all of the DNS objectives and some of the IP Addressing/DHCP and Security topics. I’ve taken the approach of mapping out the exam objectives first (I’ve formatted the actual objectives with a different colour for clarity) and then branching out from each main topic with individual notes. It’s proved to be an extremely effective way to compile study notes and here is why:

• At any time you can see exactly where your notes fit into the overall objectives
• The map is easy to navigate through so it’s really easy to come back to a topic at a later stage and add some notes.
• You can add hyperlinks to each topic or sub-topic. I’ve added hyperlinks to a lot of topics that refer to articles that I’ve read in relation to the topic.

The mind mapping process feels organic. By that I mean that the way you map out topics in Mind Manager is similar to how you do it in your head (well in my mind anyway). I guess this is the reason why I like it so much.

Here are some pics of my study notes so far (still very much a work-in-progress).