News No: 1

First Class & AI Development Program

By Steve Anderson

North East Region First Class diver and Advanced Instructor / National Instructor development programme 2007

I plan on running a series of workshops during 2007 geared towards first class diver, advanced instructor and national instructor for those people interested in developing themselves further. This will be on an informal basis but you will be asked to cover reasonable expenses incurred such as travel beyond the local area, room hire and dives.

These workshops will be open to anybody in the region. To keep the workload down to a minimum for everybody, I am proposing that we meet once per month. I have tried to identify dates around the programme of events calendar but don't expect everybody to be able to make every date planned. More dates can be organised for the practical sessions are required. Additionally as this covers FCD, AI and NI prep, I am hoping that those who already have FCD and are working towards the NI exam will help in the training of the AI and FCD candidates as part of their NI prep. This will require you to work at varying levels simultaneously and while there is much in common with each exam the expectations do differ considerably.

The workshops will consist of dry sessions, theory discussions and dry runs as well as practical diving sessions, weather and availability permitting. They will look at various aspects common to all three exams, such as marshalling & planning, task management, equipment and use, diving theory, task implementation and so on as well as exam specific training.

I have selected the following dates, all Sundays, for the workshops:

January 21 st

February 25 th

March 25 th

April 15 th

May 20 th

June 24 th

July 15 th

August 12 th

These dates are targeted towards the September 2007 AI and FCD exams. For those planning on the 2008 NI exam, I will set up another set of workshops after September. During the summer months, it may be possible to run a full weekend of diving to cover more aspects of the development. The full weekend dates will still include the above dates.

As part of the workshops I will ask you to prepare various topics that can be used to help the whole group develop their diving knowledge, so be prepared for some homework. As much a possible, I will try to run practical sessions, both dry runs and dive days.

If you are interested, or know of people in your branches who might be interested, please get in touch with me. I will need to know numbers of participants early in January so I can arrange a suitable venue. During the first workshop, I will outline in more detail what I hope to cover over the programme as well as making a start on the training.

Steve Anderson

NI 219

Steve.anderson@bsac.com

07855 323577

http://www.dive-wise.com