New to QA

I decided to write a blog on QA. I recently just started QA. It kinda fell into my lap. I work as a Technical Coordinator at a Company. The QA department were running short on workforce so they asked the Opertaions Department to help out. And thats when I met my love QA. I thoroughly enjoyed learning and performing it. Being new at the QA game I decided to surround myself with books and people in the industry in order to learn as much as I can about the facinating line. This blog was created to record my learnings and the experiences I have or will have in QA.I have been reading a book called Software Testing Foundations. I am going to take the Software Foundation Certification. I want to be certified in this field. If you are new at QA and are seriously interested in learning about it and pursuing it as a career. I suggest getting certified. You do not have to be completly technical but if you are its a BIG plus. Start joining forums and blogs and sign up with websites on QA like mine. Leave comments and ask lots and lots of questions. I have realized that no question is stupid when you are new to a field. There are people out there just like me who would thrive on getting questions and researching them for answers. There are a couple of QA user groups meetings and you should be on the watch out for one in your location. For starterd the AQAA society is great for QA. Check them out: http://www.aqaa.org/ They have tons of resources and the board members work in the industry as well. They are all certified QA Engineers who offer plenty of Knoweledge. I am a member. The membership fee is 60.00 dollars for the entire year. They also offer classes in order to help you prepare for a certification. I learned that when you start out in QA and are interested in being certified, you can take the Software Foundation Testing Certification. Its a basic certification. Level 1. To start out you can get this and then move up. There are basically three kinds of certification. There are others too but these are the ones that you can start off doing and then move on to other ones. I have not done any extensive research on other certifications but this one is quite interesting. The first level is the software foundation certification and in this you are just tested on the terms and the know hows of testing. Nothing big and i think anyone starting out should get this done. In order to have a firm understanding of all the terms and processes its a good test to give. Books that can help you in this are: Software Testing Foundations 2nd edition by Andreas Spillner, Tilo Linz and hans Schaefer, Software Testing 2nd edition by Ron Patton.They can be found on Amazon or any other book store. I found Amazon cheaper.There are other great books too but these are the ones that helped me. There are also some institutes that offer preparation classes for these certifications and at the end of the class help you to take the test. The fee for taking the test is also covered by them and is included in the course fee. ASPE Technology, http://www.learningtree.com/ are some good institutes. The cost usually is 1995 which includes course material and the cost of taking the certification test.