IDC & IE at Dive Asia in April, 2006 - The anatom ...
IDC & IE at Dive Asia in April, 2006
- The anatomy of a world class Dive Center:
Just in brief for the urgent readers; IDC at Dive Asia certainly is one of the best on the market. Perfectly organized in each detail and the Course Director(s) and Team had been very dedicated and professional. Necessary infrastructure like WLAN and computer supported presentation equipment is provided. Rental dive equipment is available and in good shape. Clients are treated like family members (www.diveasia.com). A direct accommodation is possible and reasonable (www.katabigrock.net).
Getting started; a group of ca. 10 German’s from all over the world assembled in the beginning of April, 2006 in order to become PADI Instructors. The free of charge pre-study day provided by Dive Asia was good and necessary just to warm up, evaluate and tune up skills. However, one day of preparation is reasonable for those who are frequently engaged in daily diving business. For those who are not frequently work and assist as dive masters certainly I would recommend to come a few more days earlier as the IDC is not a course to start learning the basic skills or even worse to just start learning diving theories like Physics or RDP etc. Those prerequisites should be already advanced otherwise the IDC will be real stress for some. No reason to worry: Our Course Director Heinrich Gieraths and IDC Staff Instructor Simone Freimueller really did a great job by compensating and developing the missing skills and knowledge gaps on an individual participant level just beside the core IDC. Also very useful theory-workshops had been provided. Additionally, participants receive weeks before the IDC a preparation list and at the homepage you will find the preparation advises as well. Follow those advises thoroughly and you will minimize stress as well.
Accommodation; although Kata Beach has a large variety of all hotel categories I would strongly recommend the accommodation directly at the Dive Asia site (Kata Big Rock) as it is very convenient to step out of the bungalow and into the training center or pool. However, those who stayed in hotels in or around Kata Bach joined a daily pick up service. The rooms or bungalows of Kata Big Rock are cheap and reasonable (no air condition but anyway better to keep away flu) and the cuisine is fantastic. The Kata Big Rock is a separate entity but of course all works hand in hand with the Dive Asia Team.
The IDC; the perfect organization started with a detailed time schedule and action list handed over and ended with personal accompaniment by Heinrich and Simone even into the IE – as far as allowed. In between we experienced intensive training days for example containing theoretical presentation skills (microteaching), PADI standards, confined and open water sessions (student group organization, briefing-debriefing, skill presentation, detection and correction of typical student mistakes) etc. In my opinion nobody was left alone with questions or uncertainties. Provided coffee/tea breaks fresh fruits and lunch enhanced our positive learning environment. The typical equipment problems were quickly solved by the team, anything else needed was organized quickly by Juergen so that participants could fully focus on the IDC.
The IE; due to the fact that the IDC had been conducted on a high level candidates reached passing score by end of the IDC which gave a safe feeling for the IE. In fact the IE felt much easier than the IDC and all candidates passed successfully. The PADI examiners had been fair and the overall IE was organized pretty well. By end of the third day – after the open water examination - we got the results, final feedback and of course congratulations.
Afterwards; several IDC packages are provided by Dive Asia so that I personally decided to add 5 instructor specialties afterwards (by the way the Nitrox-Specialty was provided for free to all) in order to move towards MSDT. However, as Dive Asia provides daytrips and dive safaris everybody may find some more excitement after the IDC/IE.
Many special thanks to Heinrich, Simone and Juergen for highly motivated and super professional organization and greetings to the other candidates: You had been a super team and now go ahead and make many small padi’s.
NURKI from Poland
- The anatomy of a world class Dive Center:
Just in brief for the urgent readers; IDC at Dive Asia certainly is one of the best on the market. Perfectly organized in each detail and the Course Director(s) and Team had been very dedicated and professional. Necessary infrastructure like WLAN and computer supported presentation equipment is provided. Rental dive equipment is available and in good shape. Clients are treated like family members (www.diveasia.com). A direct accommodation is possible and reasonable (www.katabigrock.net).
Getting started; a group of ca. 10 German’s from all over the world assembled in the beginning of April, 2006 in order to become PADI Instructors. The free of charge pre-study day provided by Dive Asia was good and necessary just to warm up, evaluate and tune up skills. However, one day of preparation is reasonable for those who are frequently engaged in daily diving business. For those who are not frequently work and assist as dive masters certainly I would recommend to come a few more days earlier as the IDC is not a course to start learning the basic skills or even worse to just start learning diving theories like Physics or RDP etc. Those prerequisites should be already advanced otherwise the IDC will be real stress for some. No reason to worry: Our Course Director Heinrich Gieraths and IDC Staff Instructor Simone Freimueller really did a great job by compensating and developing the missing skills and knowledge gaps on an individual participant level just beside the core IDC. Also very useful theory-workshops had been provided. Additionally, participants receive weeks before the IDC a preparation list and at the homepage you will find the preparation advises as well. Follow those advises thoroughly and you will minimize stress as well.
Accommodation; although Kata Beach has a large variety of all hotel categories I would strongly recommend the accommodation directly at the Dive Asia site (Kata Big Rock) as it is very convenient to step out of the bungalow and into the training center or pool. However, those who stayed in hotels in or around Kata Bach joined a daily pick up service. The rooms or bungalows of Kata Big Rock are cheap and reasonable (no air condition but anyway better to keep away flu) and the cuisine is fantastic. The Kata Big Rock is a separate entity but of course all works hand in hand with the Dive Asia Team.
The IDC; the perfect organization started with a detailed time schedule and action list handed over and ended with personal accompaniment by Heinrich and Simone even into the IE – as far as allowed. In between we experienced intensive training days for example containing theoretical presentation skills (microteaching), PADI standards, confined and open water sessions (student group organization, briefing-debriefing, skill presentation, detection and correction of typical student mistakes) etc. In my opinion nobody was left alone with questions or uncertainties. Provided coffee/tea breaks fresh fruits and lunch enhanced our positive learning environment. The typical equipment problems were quickly solved by the team, anything else needed was organized quickly by Juergen so that participants could fully focus on the IDC.
The IE; due to the fact that the IDC had been conducted on a high level candidates reached passing score by end of the IDC which gave a safe feeling for the IE. In fact the IE felt much easier than the IDC and all candidates passed successfully. The PADI examiners had been fair and the overall IE was organized pretty well. By end of the third day – after the open water examination - we got the results, final feedback and of course congratulations.
Afterwards; several IDC packages are provided by Dive Asia so that I personally decided to add 5 instructor specialties afterwards (by the way the Nitrox-Specialty was provided for free to all) in order to move towards MSDT. However, as Dive Asia provides daytrips and dive safaris everybody may find some more excitement after the IDC/IE.
Many special thanks to Heinrich, Simone and Juergen for highly motivated and super professional organization and greetings to the other candidates: You had been a super team and now go ahead and make many small padi’s.
NURKI from Poland