Continuing Education... Your thoughts?

[joe rock]

NWGratfulDiver,

Love the Christmas Gerry.

 

[joe rock]

Unfortunately, many instructors and shop owners view AOW as nothing more than a few extra dives with an instructor ... and an opportunity to sell the student some more gear. So I do understand where you're coming from ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

It's great to see a lot of passionate opinions without much mud slinging I think a few things just jump out at you with these replys.

Like any educational situation, "students" take classes for a lot of different reasons (not always to learn something) and instructors (dive shops included) teach classes for a lot of different reasons. If a student that truely wants to learn specific things can match that with an instructor that really wants to teach than the classes are worth while. Conversely, if either one doesn't meet that criteria, its a joke.

As I said a lot of posts ago, apparently I was VERY lucky to find a LDS whose instructors really care about teaching and not just making money. In my case AOW was valuable.

BTW, being in business I had a conversation with my LDS owner. He is a for profit company Maybe he just gets that the way to make the most profit is to offer value! Someone is not truely your customer until they make multiple purchases wheter it be dive classes or dive equipment.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

So to even add to what you're saying... isn't EVERY DAY a NEW DAY, and part of one's continuing education?

Absolutely!! :thumbs_up

 

[asaara]

If you truly feel like you're NOT READY for AOW... Wait. It's that simple... PLEASE don't rush to collect plastic (unless you're like rick, and you're collecting Starbucks cards)

If PADI made keychain cards like supermarket saver cards, *then* I would have to try and collect every cert in existence...for this reason, I hope they never do!

However, if anyone feels like mailing a keychain saver card to Canada for a donation to my collection, I've already got Tops, Kessel, Kroger, Petsmart, GNC, CVS, and Randalls - I'll gladly accept anything else! <g>

 

[ae3753]

OK... So maybe I got my AOW for all of the wrong reason (because Key Largo dive ops require it for certain dives), and maybe I didn't try to challenge myself. . . . Perhaps my case is rare (although I don't think it is, since so many other people have called AOW a guided tour)

I don't think that you got AOW for the wrong reason. If you needed it for the Key Largo dives, then that's great.

Yes, you could have learned more and challenged yourself greater. But that can be said for 90% of the recreational dive courses I have seen.

And I definitely don't think that your case is rare at all. It fustrates me that it's so common. Both instructor and students should strive for more. I have seen instructors teach to a lower bar to accomodate students with lower desire. And I have seen students complain loudly when instructors ask them to do more diving, "But my friends only had to do X and he got an AOW card."

Best of luck in rescue!

-Don

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I also really love the tone this thread has taken. There have been many ops for bashing but really no one has. Fish Whisperer has it down good. Every dive should be a new dive and learning experience. Whether it's part of a course or not. For me the added knowledge of a course just adds to the enjoyment. And when expertise is imparted by a more experienced diver things become clearer and the reasons for doing certain things certain ways becomes more clear to me. Also think for a minute about this, take an avg warm,clear water diver and put him and his buddy in one of our lakes or quarries with easily disturbed silt bottoms and usual vis of 4-6 ft. tell him that the platform is 100 ft at a heading of 240 degrees and to follow the bottom contour then turn left for 40 ft at a heading of 150 then right on 210 for 50 ft and drop down onto the 50 ft platform. I'll meet you there. Many on here I'm sure could do it. But what about the ones that can't. What are they supposed to do? look foolish? Not necessarily. Take these same two, do the uw nav specialty where they count kicks along a measured distance, have em practice compass use in the parking lot for a half hour, get em oriented and lead them on a supervised dive and thebn have then lead a couple along with the other requirements for the specialty and then give them the same task. What happens when they nail it? Two more knowledgeable, more confident, and better skilled divers who can nav in the the stuff we do so when they go back home they amaze their friends who were at the same level but now are somewhat behind. so doing that dive in 50-100 ft vis around reefs and wrecks is much simpler and safer and the time spent and areas covered are extended and made more enjoyable.

Now when I hear someone say I won't dive there, there's nothing to see, my answer is because you won't see. In 4-6 ft or less vis you learn to appreciate what you do see if you have the right attitude. Each time I dive at our local spot I see something different. Different lifeforms, different landmarks to add to my map and to navigate by. Different techniques to see these things and place to work on better buoyancy control. I understand that some just want to dive for "fun" and that's cool. For me learning is fun.

 

[joe rock]

JimLap,

Amen!

 

[MikeFerrara]

As for buoyancy and not being able to get down: This is a problem common to newbies. When you're in the water, make sure you flood your wetsuit with water. Open the collar of it, or pull the neck open and let it flood. When you're ready to descend, do it in a standing position rather than head-down. Many BC's have an air dump on the right shoulder strap. Dump all of your air, and then make sure you exhale FULLY AND COMPLETELY. Providing you are otherwise properly weighted, you should slip right down, and once you're beyond 20', you'll stay down anyway. If you're too light, the danger comes at the end of the dive, when you need to make your deco stop and your tank is more buoyant because it's been breathed down. Personally, I always try to dive a little on the heavy side... Good luck.

-Frank

Frank, if you're correctly weighted you will be heavy by the weight of the air in your tank at the beginning of the dive. One of the mistakes many new divers make is that they do dump all their air before beginning a descent. You don't need to. Just vent enough to be neutral at the surface. If you took a PADI class you had to practice this in confined water dive 2. Once you're neutral just exhale and you'll begin your descent and you'll have enough control to stop any where you please without having to blast air back into the bc.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Good stuff, Jim. I think Nav is going to be one of my specialties.

Mike, I agree with you, but as a relative n00b, the most frustrating thing is not being able to descend. I'm still getting my weight dialed in for a couple of reasons:
1. I've got a bit less bodyfat than I did when I did my cert. dives.
2. I did my cert. dives in a 7mm wetsuit, and really had to pour on the weight because I wasn't exhaling completely, and I had neglected to open the wetsuit and let the water fill it so that it wouldn't be so buoyant.

Most of my diving is in warm water where I can go down with either a skin, or just swim trunks and my BC, so I'm still messing around with it, but getting a lot better.

I didn't take a PADI class, although my instructor was a PADI instructor for years, but now teaches for MDEA, and that's who I have my C-card through.

Thanks again.

-Frank

 

[MikeFerrara]

Don't blame that one on PADI, Howard...My AOW was PADI and I had Search and Recovery and we learned to bring objects to the surface with a lift bag. We also had a great session on shore with my instructor on knot tying as well - in fact he had us practice a bowline until we could tie it with our eyes closed. That was 2 years ago and I can still do it.

When Bob talks about deploying an SMB he's not decessarily refering to lifing objects. He's more likely talking about deploying a surface marker midwater from some point during the ascent.

Your sense of disillusionment with AOW seems to me to be due to the fact that the choice of electives was inappropriate for you given your experience with your previous dives. Had you had less previous experience, you might have been able to learn something very useful from your instructor about those specialty dives. However, because you *had* so much experience diving under those circumstances, I think you were not well served by taking those particular elective courses and would've been much *better* served by choosing others that interested you, but in which you didn't already have so much experience.

I not only took AOW but I taught it for some years and I'm pretty disillusioned about it too. The idea of a guided introduction to new environments and activities is ok. It's the implimentation that often goes wrong. Not too long ago, I was getting an OW class started. My students were hovering around a training platform getting ready to start and we were terribly silted out. Upon looking for the source of the mess I found there was a AOW class using the area next to us and they were sitting in the muck doing their underwater knots for the S&R dive. What good does that do them? I used to set a bucket of rocks in the siltiest place I could find and have students tie the knots to the handle. I required that they keep the area clean or I wouldn't be able to see and check their knots and the whole thing wouldn't count. The problem is that agency standards allow the instructor to do it either way. One might teach something and the other is a wast of time.

I've seen the deep dive get too many people hurt. They just take new divers who haven't yet developed the skills to dive well shallow down deep and no one should be knocking their head against the wall trying to figure out why when some one gets hurt. It's very possible for this dive to be the studentsd 5th lifetime dive and they can be taken to 100 ft. Did you know that it's possible to become an instructor with noly one dive below 60 ft (the one you did in your own AOW class)? This way the instructor and his student can do their first 100 ft dive together. Sorry, going hand over hand down a line to 100 ft to sit on a platform and do a puzzle or something is not by any stretch of the imagination any sort of training for deep diving. The deeper you go the more important are things like efficient technique and correct breathing, good control over ascents and descents, gas management ect, yet those things are not required by some AOW training standards.

So, a class to introduce students to the depths they'll see on their vacation might be a solid idea but dropping them down like a rock and hauling them up a line doesn't seem of much value and it might just somehow lead the student to believe that they're ready to be diving at 100 ft.

Some agency standards require the student to do some things underwater without requireing that they be diving when they do them.