PADI Training = Sound Instructional Practices

This is not me (yet)....

I'm now into my second official day of PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors) training with the Scuba Nation outfit, based on Serendipity Beach in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. (Actually, working from 9AM until about 6PM yesterday enabled me to finish two days worth of training in one, so today I'm chilling out a little bit working on PD, walking, reading, studying Khmai, and doing chins and benchpress in the gym.)

I must say that I'm very impressed with the quality of the educational experience I've had with this PADI program so far. I hold it on par with outdoor education programs I have attended, weightlifting lessons I have learned from Mr. Nick Hinde, and the incredibly useful and practical Motorcycle Safety Course offered by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation of the United States (see below for the link) - a course which I credit as one of the main inspirations for going into teaching.

PADI has obviously created courses with a keen insight into how people learn. Based on my experiences with my instructor yesterday, it also seems to me that when learning to be dive instructors, PADI associates appropriate ways of motivating students, teaching skills developmentally, and assessing learning and readiness of students.

Learning Styles PADI has considered

In addition, PADI courses also seem to have been designed around the idea that people have various learning styles and ways of accessing, and internalising information. All materials and necessary skills are presented a variety of times in ways that give visual, aural, verbal, physical, and logical learners equal chances to access information. For example, students are expected to read a well organised dive manual containing numbered lists, pictures, clear headings, subheadings, glossaries, and tables of contents (for logical/ visual/ verbal/ solitary learners), watch a video containing this information more succinctly (for visual/ aural/ solitary learners), participate in discussions of the curriculum (for aural learners), complete hours of practical skill applications and performance based assessments in a confined dive space and in open water (for social/ aural/ physical learners), and complete calculations using Recreational Dive Planners and dive plan graphic representations (for logical learners).

My experience with this course has not only caused me to remark on the skill of instruction however. I also cannot help but think again about my own learning and the concepts I have been successful at learning in my own life. A few truisms come to mind:

a) I am most likely to successfully learn skills that combine thinking and physical actions and that have an almost immediate application to enjoyable activities;
b) I am most likely to successfully learn ANYTHING (PD, language, a new sport, etc.) on a holiday, when my mind, my time, and my emotional states are my own. Thus, my affective filter is at its lowest ebb and I can be the most open-minded to new ideas.

These are important considerations, if not always easily applicable, for my own Grade 4/5 classroom back in busy Phnom Penh.

Coming up next time, how to become a regularly gigging musician with the help of Google!

Link to PADI website

Link to Motorcycle Safety Foundation (USA) homepage

Interested in a reputable and professional diving center in Cambodia? Click here!

New Beginnings for 2014

Welcome to Lost and Found in Southeast Asia. 

Lost = a state of being in which any object, idea, place, or person that was once available to our concrete and conscious self has temporarily or permanently ceased to be available.

Found = a state of being in which we have discovered, or rediscovered, objects, places, ideas, or people and are able to use and appreciate these references in the course of navigating through our lives.

Lost and found = a place to go where one can reunite with people or things that have, for whatever reason, been displaced. Alternatively, a safe place to go when one has been separated from relations, where one can hope to reconnect with trusted others in a short period of time. Finally, sometimes, a place to go and get new stuff that no one else has claimed for whatever reason.

Southeast Asia: a region of the world generally consisting of countries to the east of Bangladesh, south of China, and north of Australia. In terms of culture, this geographic area, despite its countries frequently being labeled as "quite homogenous" and "conservative", has been inevitably altered and modified by an influx of ideas and migrants, and an often open minded approach to life taken by its inhabitants.

With this blog, I hope to be able to communicate new ideas with colleagues and friends, especially regarding education, technology, and the experiences of lifelong learners. As such, at various times of the year roughly corresponding to school breaks, this blog will sometimes appear to be a travelogue. At other times, it may read like an unfolding piece of action research detailing a new teaching technique, or a language learning idea. Most likely, like life, this blog will from time to time lose focus, only to find it again at some unspecified later date.

Anyways, enjoy and I hope you derive some benefit and a chuckle from time to time as I make my thinking visible.