learning visualbasic

If you have already read many books on VB and taken the time to experiment with the samples on learning CDs then the next step, aside from taking classes, would be to develop a prog. from the ground up. More time may be involved teaching yourself asopposed to having someone guide you, but the benefits are tremendous in learning your way from a beginners stage to a intemidiate level. You learn so many other things along the way, as well as gain experience - especially in the area of what NOT todo.
That is the way I would do it based on what you have asked. There is no "magic" available to be able to learn a programming language - just like there is none in learning math or a foreign language - you have to USE it in order to become good with it, and along the way get guidance to make sure that you do not go off in the wrong direction or get into some bad habits. Speaking about bad habits -take your books and CDs and look for where they talk about Standards and Naming Conventions -important. Also important is to document in the code what each proceedure is doing so you have a reference later when you need to inspect the code again and/or better it, and for others who may someday need to read/use your code. Break your code apart into easily understandable proceedures/components, not letting any one proceedure do "too much" -later, if feasible, you can put some of those proceedures together again easily-it is much easier to do and understand the code that way.
Experiment, experiment and figure out ways to improve existing code. But do it - plan a simple project that can later grow and be expanded. Write and rewrite it. Let others test your application to see where the bugs are. And always keep the novice user of your application in mind, who may do the unexpecting - doing things you may not normally think of because you may have programmed based based on your own habits and ways.
All the best!