Innovation In Recreational Scuba Diving?

[Akimbo]

That's why I said that with today's technology "YOU" could create effective learning…

In that case, this industry is in MUCH bigger trouble than I ever imagined.

 

[Akimbo]

…Sounds like a job for...

AD MAN!...

I think Bob was thinking more along these lines

 

[RJP]

RDP is bad enough. Imaging calculating dive profiles on an HP-12C in RPN.

Yikes!

 

[Bob DBF]

Remember how often the old lights flooded, or are you trying to forget?

I'm still using the DarrallAllen light for the big jobs, I must admit I did convert it to a spotlight LED, but it has never flooded.

I’m still waiting for the material science wizards to develop a material that is better than Titanium at the cost of injection molded ABS. Then we can have sets of 10,000 PSI doubles that are just bumps on our Freedom Plates!

I wouldn't mind giving that a spin.



Bob

 

[drrich2]

+1 I'm convinced the only reason DPVs haven't changed things enormously for most types of diving is the relatively extreme price-point for the real ones. Whether I'm freediving, single tank rec diving, or on a long/deep CCR dive, nothing else I use has been so useful or so much damn fun.

Since a lot of diving is either travel diving, where a DPV is too large to conveniently to toss in a suit case, or inland freshwater diving that's less broadly scenic (e.g.: quarry diving), I'm thinking for DPV to transform diving you'd need it to be offered like scuba tanks; as a destination provider rental at a cheap rate. But a few issues come to mind:

1.) Scuba tanks are a necessity; DPVs are a 'toy' of sorts for most.

2.) Because of the difference in transport capability, for the typical Caribbean herd dive, everyone must be on one or no one can be. Which means a lot of up front expense, plus ongoing service (e.g.: charging) & maintenance.

3.) The ease with which disoriented/lost divers can get far from the boat & guide, coupled with the potential to keep driving & not come up (e.g.: not stop & ask for directions even when you ought to know you're lost), may cause lost diver scenarios to get more common & severe. You need a technology whereby the boat can track these things at a distance.

4.) Unless you bundle a course with it (which cuts out cruise ship folks who are only with you for 2 dives), or you're willing to risk untrained divers in a new place 'self-educating' on them, or restrict your boat passengers to people who already know how to use them, implementing DPVs on a typical charter boat could be impractical.

I'm thinking there may be an under used market, though.

1.) Tech. charters of big name wrecks, for people who want to see the whole wreck in one dive, not just a piece of it. How often have you said you've dove a given wreck, when actually, you just dove a piece of it?

2.) As an individual rental at shore dive sites, yes Bonaire but also sites with longer average swim outs. Perhaps Cane Bay Dive Resort in St. Croix?

Here's a question; if you were considering some dive destinations with shore dive options, such as Bonaire, Curacao, St. Croix, Grand Cayman & if memory serves, Cayman Brac, would a popular dive op. offering cheap DPV rentals make a big difference in your plans?

I don't want to derail the thread on a big tangent. I'm just thinking that it may be useful to consider why some items with potential did not transform recreational diving as yet. DPVs, underwater com. units & rebreathers are such items.

Richard.

 

[boulderjohn]

Unless I missed it, E-learning has not been addressed. It is yet another adapted technology which is very much in its infancy. A lot of knowledge is required to be a really good, safe, and confident diver. All this information can be presented in horribly boring and confusing ways.

I have believed for a long time that E-learning will change the world. It will evolve to include constant and subtle testing disguised as interaction. The human responses will guide the presentation of data in a way that is easiest to digest by the individual student. The stagnant one-size-fits-all model simply won’t be necessary.

The same presentation for a student with a PhD in Physics won’t work for a science and math challenged artist. An English teacher will probably need more time to understand how a regulator works than a HVAC technician. The Physics PhD will probably need a little more time getting a thorough understanding of barotrauma than an emergency room doc. Everyone knows an important key to learning is making it interesting which is the exact opposite of boring and confusing.

Some people are hyper visual and others are highly verbal. The world is filled with different languages and cultures. In time, a computer can be programmed to adjust the presentation. The presentation can be adjust based on the student reply by presenting different examples when answers are wrong and getting on with it when the student appears to have nailed it.

The downside is diver education is a small market and a lot of talented people will have to develop lots of content presented in many different ways. This gets to the heart of how we are wired.

That is essentially a summary of the argument made by Harvard business professor Dr. Clayton Christensen in his book Disrupting Class. He predicts online education will totally upend traditional education, primarily for the very reasons you mention. I have taught both online students and traditional students. The online students general have had a much higher level of understanding of the academic issues of scuba than the traditional students. They rarely miss a question on the final exam.

 

[Akimbo]

I'm still using the DarrallAllen light for the big jobs, I must admit I did convert it to a spotlight LED, but it has never flooded…

I consider the Darrall Allen one of the game-changing products of its day. I have thought about doing the LED conversion on a couple old “Dive Bright” housings but the cost of feeding it with 10 D-cells didn’t make sense. The ad below says a lot about how bad lights were at that time. $29.95 is just under $200 inflation adjusted, but compared to the market was really much more than that. Only a small number of professionals would consider spending what is commonly spend on a can light today.

Same story with the Bouée Fenzy horse collar emergency inflation unit that sold for $125.00 in 1968. A top of the line regulators sold for $80-$100 that year and surface-only Mae West inflatable jackets listed for $28.50… but very few people actually used them so the price comparison was really $125 relative to $0.

 

[Akimbo]

That is essentially a summary of the argument made by Harvard business professor Dr. Clayton Christensen in his book Disrupting Class...

Sounds interesting. What do the authors say about discipline issues since it focuses on grades K-12? I can see a bunch of kids at computers in small cubby/cubicles and a roaming human teacher or two. Basically the computer will be programmed to tattle when a student is interacting below their normal. Is the kid sick, day dreaming about what s/he just learned, bored, confused, or just screwing off?

About the only part E-learning has today is hyperlinks imbedded in what is little more than an E-book. Don’t get me wrong, heavily imbedded hyperlinks are fantastic, but a long way from the kind of AI-like programming that is really necessary for this vision to work. What will be really interesting is to see how humans evolve in reaction to it.

 

[dmoore19]

Interesting.

I am not sure that everybody will fit into that nice little package of internet training. I admit the way I learn best is in the old fashioned classroom environment. It probably has to do with my age.

 

[boulderjohn]

Sounds interesting. What do the authors say about discipline issues since it focuses on grades K-12? I can see a bunch of kids at computers in small cubby/cubicles and a roaming human teacher or two. Basically the computer will be programmed to tattle when a student is interacting below their normal. Is the kid sick, day dreaming about what s/he just learned, bored, confused, or just screwing off?

About the only part E-learning has today is hyperlinks imbedded in what is little more than an E-book. Don’t get me wrong, heavily imbedded hyperlinks are fantastic, but a long way from the kind of AI-like programming that is really necessary for this vision to work. What will be really interesting is to see how humans evolve in reaction to it.

You clearly have no experience with well-made online education courses.

This was my job for many years. What you describe was like my first struggling attempt to create a class more than 20 years ago. it was not long after that when online course management systems first developed the ability to track student interaction with the courses. It was crude at first, but it evolved quickly. When I finally retired from one of the largest online education companies about 5 years ago, it was costing us about $100,000 to develop each full year course. We had interactive videos, check quizzes that directed the students to areas for remediation based on their performances, interactive practice activities, group projects, etc. Science students can manipulate actual experiments performed at remote sites. Simulations allow students to do all sorts of things along the lines of the flight simulators used to train pilots.

The PADI online courses are full of such things. The PADI computer OW course, whether taken online or through a text, includes a link to a great simulator that takes the students through various diving situations, showing ow a generic computer is used, how it tracks nitrogen loading and unloading, how it deals with emergency decompression.