LDS's going out of business very soon - help them out!

[divezero]

Definetely...will be very interesting.

Personally, as an instructor before dive magazine editor, I do not know where to stand in all of this, which side to be on, I think it will have it's advantages as to helping divers get there open water faster, helping out LDS's and disadvantages such as more "untrained divers" that just havent had the quality time spent with them and more diver deaths in exchange for more money and gear sales, do not think that is worth it. Just will have to see how everything turns out, it's a great idea, just depends how they do it. Until then, all we can do is keep a close eye on it!

 

[PhilEllis]

The most irresponsible statement that I have ever seen is any statement about online certification.

On line certification of scuba divers has never been mentioned by any agency, has never been suggested to be possible by any agency, and simply is NOT the issue with eLearning. This program is simply a more scientific way to present the academic material that EVERY scuba diver must learn prior to entering the water skills portion of the training. PADI, nor any other agency, has ever advocated sending certification cards to students based on internet certification.

Phil Ellis

 

[Spratman]

Since PADI is a for profit organization, consider the cost saving. E-Learning is going to continue. A very large portion of the course curriculum was printing costs for the manual. So, it gets passed onto the student. Now, eliminate the printing costs, updates are made with a couple of key strokes. The material stays current.

PADI charges the same price for E-Learning as with the student packets without the overhead, and has thousands more in the till.

This is a POSTULATION on my part. I don't know the pricing schemes PADI may implement and the LDS still can set their price points for OW training.

 

[scuba-charters]

As to the Independent Dive Instructors... I've been wanting to do the PADI resort classification, but neither have the Instructors, nor the $800+ yearly fee. I can't justify $800+ per year just for them to put my dive charter biz in some secret place on their website, though, I do like the pics online option, but again, can't justify the $800+ for 5-10 students a year. The online classroom portion would be great, but again, $800+ per year.

I don't have a big dive op, and never will. I do have some of the best diving on the planet here. If independents were interested in some type of conglomeration of professionals, I could be interested... I would also be happy to give you a free spot for every 5 divers and such...

This is just a trial balloon that I'm floating... Feel free to take shots at it or me... I have faith that someone will tell me how this won't work. I'm interested to hear how it might work though...

 

[mike_s]

As to the Independent Dive Instructors... I've been wanting to do the PADI resort classification, but neither have the Instructors, nor the $800+ yearly fee. I can't justify $800+ per year just for them to put my dive charter biz in some secret place on their website, though, I do like the pics online option, but again, can't justify the $800+ for 5-10 students a year. The online classroom portion would be great, but again, $800+ per year.

...

$800 extra per year Padi charges to let you teach the "resort course"?

what do you get for the extra $800? Is it extra insurance for uncertified divers? or just a way to let them charge extra?

 

[scuba-charters]

No... not to teach the Resort course, but to be a recognized resort... As to exactly what you get for the money, I've had many arguments with different PADI employees and noone has ever said anything that has given me a reason to part with that much money...

One employee suggested that the online leads would more than pay for it. But, when I suggested that they let me try it for free and I would be happy to show my website statistics, and, if it was true, I would be an idiot not to pay... it pretty much fell flat... Stopped falling for the "pull your pants down, bend over, and trust me" routine a while back...

 

[mike_s]

No... not to teach the Resort course, but to be a recognized resort... As to exactly what you get for the money, I've had many arguments with different PADI employees and noone has ever said anything that has given me a reason to part with that much money...

One employee suggested that the online leads would more than pay for it. But, when I suggested that they let me try it for free and I would be happy to show my website statistics, and, if it was true, I would be an idiot not to pay... it pretty much fell flat... Stopped falling for the "pull your pants down, bend over, and trust me" routine a while back...

oh... that's $800 just to be listed as a "PADI Resort Center" ?

what a rip-off. I guess PADI does indeed stand for

Put
Another
Dollar
In

 

[scuba-charters]

I'm gonna look bad for defending PADI...

But, the "put another dollar in" doesn't really apply until you become a professional or a LDS or Resort. And, to their benefit, the structured training courses are very excellent. It's all the other stuff, where they typically fall short. They would be miles ahead, if they would just concentrate on their original concept. Moving their course stuff online is only a natural progression of their original intent and I think a very good thing.

 

[divezero]

Okay, we got the PADI thing out of the way, now to focus on one of the other reasons I posted this. In our new online mag, we will also be having a list of all the scuba shops in the world (All the ones that are well known and not as well known - for free). It acts as a dive shop directory guide for everyone. Now, one of you mentioned PADI charges you $800.00 for a link, come on now, who in their right mind would pay that.

If you have a dive shop or would just like to submit your local dive shop, let me know and I will put it up for free. The estimated hits for the Issue 1 mag is based on our website hits, myspace hits, etc and averages out to nearly 100,000 unique hits for the first 3 months.

Free advertising, you can't go wrong. Submit your local dive shop.

 

[jbichsel]

I'm gonna look bad for defending PADI...

But, the "put another dollar in" doesn't really apply until you become a professional or a LDS or Resort. And, to their benefit, the structured training courses are very excellent. It's all the other stuff, where they typically fall short. They would be miles ahead, if they would just concentrate on their original concept. Moving their course stuff online is only a natural progression of their original intent and I think a very good thing.

While on the surface and from and 'ease of use' view the PADI structured training courses do quite well and I do agree with the phylosophy of starting simple and gradually building upon previously 'mastered' skills, there are some inherent flaws, IMO.

One being that since they are rather rigid in that you cannot bring skills from future training dives forward, you run into some Catch 22 scenarios whereby, if you are an instructor that is simply going to follow the slates and provide the minimum standards to get through the course, you do a disservice to your students and actually cannot progress beyond Confined Water Dive 1, if you adhere to the standards.

Fortunately, PADI standards do allow some flexibility to enable those who care to work a bit, the ability to be creative and get past CWD1.

As this is a public forum and not the I2I forum, I won't go into details here.