Marzo 2015 - Learn to Dive - SDI | TDI | ERDI

Teach SCUBA Diving with SDI TDI ERDI

Over the last few years, more and more scuba diving professionals have been taking a closer look at the different options available through International Training. From recreational sport diving to cutting-edge technical training and on through public safety diving practices, International Training has been a forerunner in shaping these three areas of scuba diving. Scuba Diving International (SDI), Technical Diving International (TDI) and Emergency Response Diving International (ERDI) all work as standalone agencies, or in conjunction, based on your training needs.

We are accepting new members… find out how!

The International Training; SDI, TDI, and ERDI crossover program allows Divemasters (DM), Assistant Instructors (AI), and Instructors to become a certified dive professional within the International Training system if they hold an equivalent rating with an organization recognized by the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC), European Underwater Federation (EUF), and International Standards Organization (ISO).

In recognition of this, International Training has developed an equivalency table to outline the qualifications International Training will accept as a crossover, so long as the member is in good standing with their current organization.

It should be noted, this list is subject to change without any notice. Please do not download, take screen captures, or copy this information as it’s available through the website allowing viewers to have the most up-to-date information. All leadership applications are subject to review and approval of International Training’s Training Department.

You May Qualify to Crossover to SDI Divemaster If You Hold One of the Following Ratings…	You May Qualify to Crossover to SDI Assistant Instructor If You Hold One of the Following Ratings	You May Qualify to Crossover to SDI Open Water Scuba Diver Instructor If You Hold One of the Following Ratings…
ACUC Divemaster	ACUC Assistant Instructor	ACUC Open Water Instructor
ANDI Divemaster	ANDI Assistant Instructor	ANDI Instructor
BSAC Dive Leader	BSAC Assistant Open Water Instructor	BSAC Open Water Instructor
CMAS: BEFOS-FEBRAS Three Star Diver	CMAS: BEFOS-FEBRAS One Star Instructor	CMAS: BEFOS-FEBRAS Two Star Instructor
CMAS: CFT Three Star Diver	CMAS: CFT One Star Instructor	CMAS: CFT Two Star Instructor
CMAS: DSF Three Star Diver	CMAS: DSF One Star Instructor	CMAS: DSF Two Star Instructor
CMAS: FIAS Three Star Diver	CMAS: FIAS One Star Instructor	CMAS: FIAS Two Star Instructor
CMAS: TDIF Three Star Diver	CMAS: TDIF One Star Instructor	CMAS: TDIF Two Star Instructor
CMAS: VDST Three Star Diver	CMAS: VDST One Star Instructor	CMAS: VDST Two Star Instructor
CMAS: VDTL Three Star Diver	CMAS: VDT One Star Instructor	CMAS: VDTL Two Star Instructor
DDI Divemaster	DDI Assistant Instructor	DDI Instructor
IAC Dive Leader	IAC Basic Instructor	IAC Open Water Instructor
IDEA Divemaster	IDEA Assistant Instructor	IDEA Open Water Instructor
ISDA Divemaster	ISDA Assistant Instructor	ISDA Open Water Instructor
NASDS Divemaster	NASDS Scuba Instructor	NASDS OWSD Instructor
NAUI Assistant Instructor	NAUI Divemaster	NAUI Instructor
NDL Divemaster	NDL Instructor Level 1	NDL Instructor Level 1
PADI Divemaster	PADI Assistant Instructor	PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor
PDA Group Guide	PDA Assistant Instructor	PDA Instructor
PDIC Dive Supervisor	PDIC Assistant Instructor	PDIC Instructor
PSS Divemaster	PSS Assistant Instructor	PSS Sua Instructor
SNSI Divemaster	SNSI Open Water Instructor	SNSI DM Instructor
SSI Divemaster	SSI Dive Control Specialist	SSI Open Water Instructor
WOSD Dive Leader	WOSD Instructor Level 1	WOSD Instructor Level 2
		GUE Rec 1 Instructor

If you do not see your dive training organization listed, not to worry – there are still options available for you! Fill out the form below to receive more information from our Training Department.

If you are located outside of North America, contact your local SDI, TDI, ERDI Regional Office. A contact list can be found here: https://www.tdisdi.dev/contact/.

Crossover candidates must provide verification that they are in active teaching status and in good standing with the organization they are crossing over from. If a crossover candidate is not currently in active teaching status; additional requirements may apply.

So add a new avenue to your current training curriculum by crossing over to International Training. We look forward to you joining our team.

See our Recreational Sport Diver Equivalences here!

Fill out this form for more information about crossing over

[contact-form-7 id=”65304″ title=”Crossover Equivalency Inquiry”]

Become an SDI/TDI/ERDI Instructor Trainer!

Marzo 23, 2015/0 Commenti

CLICK HERE TO SEE TO SEE THE AVAILABLE DATES, GET MORE DETAILS, AND SIGN UP TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT!

International Training recently completed an Instructor Trainer Workshop (ITW) in Israel and it was a huge SUCCESS! The first U.S. based ITW of the year is quickly approaching (April 12 – 19, 2015), and space is limited. If you are an SDI, TDI, or ERDI Instructor who meets the prerequisites, and you are interested in taking your career to the next level, then you need to drop what you are doing and start the ITW application process today.

The course will take place over an intense eight days at SDI/TDI/ERDI World Headquarters in Jensen Beach, Florida. You will be working directly with headquarters staff and an appointed Instructor Trainer Evaluator presenting and evaluating various subjects such as: methods of instruction, dive leader risk management, the business of scuba diving, as well as teaching SDI, TDI, and ERDI instructor level courses. You will also present and evaluate in-water presentations and skills, participate in class discussions, take the ITW final written exam, and more!

After completing this distinguished Instructor Trainer Workshop, you will be able to train instructors, assist/staff Instructor Trainer Workshops, and conduct Crossover Programs for diving professionals. You may also qualify as an Instructor Trainer for TDI and ERDI courses as you build experience teaching at those levels, without needing to attend another ITW. As an Instructor Trainer, you become more valuable to your facility as well, since you will be able expand your dive center’s instructor base, thus increasing revenue opportunities.

If you are interested in applying for one of the next ITW’s, please click here to verify that you meet the prerequisites (call or email the Training Department if you have any questions or concerns), and download the ITW Application. Please submit the ITW application package in full, with all of the required documentation listed on page 2, plus a $500.00 deposit to reserve your spot.

Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics – Part 2

Marzo 23, 2015/0 Commenti

by James Councill:
In Part 1 of the Beginners Guide to Google Analytics (GA), we reviewed what GA is and some very basic terminology and metrics you should review on a regular basis to evaluate your website’s (or app’s) performance. In Part 2, we are going to look deeper into the Audience and Acquisition sections of GA to find out more about your website’s users, as well as how they are navigating to your website.

We started in the Audience Tab, looking at how many sessions your website has during a given time period.

Tracking this consistently every month will help you evaluate your marketing success or lack thereof. However, there are some subsections of the Audience Tab that can provide you with some invaluable information to help you understand your audience, who/where they are, and how to best reach them. Without detailing every subset, let’s look at some of the most used and valuable information that can be deduced from these reports.

Demographics – What age and gender are the users who are visiting your website?
Interests – What are users interested in, and what affinity categories and market segments do they fall into?
Geo – Where are users geographically located and what language do they speak?
Behavior – New (first-time) users versus returning users, how are they engaging your website?
Technology – what browsers and networks?
Mobile – what devices are being used to access your website?
Benchmarking – how your sites statistics compare to other aggregated industry data?

How is all of this information useful? Well, knowing your customer is key to your marketing strategy. The market segmentation statistics provide you with user profile(s). Knowing where your customers are, what language they speak, the technology they use, their demographic and affinity profiles also allow you to put together targeted ads. For example, if you want to run some ads for your website, you may want to target those ads based on the information provided above, or you may realize that you need to target your ads elsewhere to break into a new market segment. Either way, this information provided by GA about your audience gives you the knowledge to make these well-informed decisions.

The Audience Tab gives detailed insights into your website audience, but you also need to know where these users are coming from and how they are reaching your website? In Part 1 of this article, we overviewed the Acquisition Tab, its terminology and how it provides you with this information through defined presets of channels, sources, and mediums. Like the Audience Tab, there is the Overview report, and a few subsections that breakdown your website’s user acquisition into more detailed reports. There are however, certain sections that do not apply to everyone. Adwords only applies if you are running paid ads through Google Adwords, and if you have both of these apps connected (highly recommended by the way). Most other subsections apply to all websites, with the exception of Paid Keywords and Cost Analysis, which are again reserved for paid advertising. Let’s take a look at the most commonly used subsections:

All Traffic – All Traffic tells you how someone discovered your site. It includes everything – from someone typing your URL into their browser, as well as search engine result pages (SERPs), email, social networks, or referrals from other websites.

Search Engine Optimization – what queries and keywords are being searched to find your website, landing pages, and a geographical summary related to those queries as well.

The SEO reports provides the search queries and keywords that have resulted in a URL from your website showing up in a user’s search engine results, along with the impressions and clicks for that query. This provides you with valuable keyword research data that can be very useful for paid search campaigns and content optimization.

Social – provides social analytics.

On the surface, this subsection can tell you which social networks are providing you with the most website traffic. This alone is valuable, but it also “provides you with the tools to measure the impact of social. You can identify high value networks and content, track on-site and off-site user interaction with your content, and tie it all back to your bottom line revenue through goals and conversions.” – Google Anlaytics Help Forum. Goals and conversion go beyond the scope of this article, but as you become more proficient with GA , I encourage you to start looking into these concepts.

Campaigns – Campaign tracking is mainly for tracking paid advertising, but is also very practical for tracking un-paid or custom campaigns, such as email marketing or paid campaigns that are not Google Adwords. Through the process of URL tagging, you can designate certain parameters to URLs for the purpose of tracking that URL and the traffic it is responsible for.

For example, let’s say you want to run a banner ad on the local weather station’s website for your Open Water Scuba Diving Class. Earlier, we learned that you can look at your website’s traffic referrals to see how much traffic is coming from the local weather station’s website, but that doesn’t really tell you how your ad is performing – does it? By designating the URL for that ad with a campaign tag, you can find out exactly how many sessions or users came from that ad. Once we setup conversion tracking, we will then be able to tell if the money you are spending on the ad is generating enough revenue to cover the ad spend or ROI? This, again is getting into concepts that are beyond the scope of this article, but just something for you to be thinking of in advance. Stay tuned for more…

Are there other GA concepts that you would like help understanding? Are there questions about the concepts addressed or not addressed in this article? Please leave your comments below, and we will do our best to answer them.

Technology Update: New Reporting Functionality for Facility Admins

Marzo 23, 2015/0 Commenti

We have long offered the ability to generate a report that includes student names, emails, and certifications. However we’ve recently made this functionality more robust by including a start and end date for the report being requested, thus enabling you to control the data being generated and having more accurate results than ever before.
Want to check out this new feature? Follow the steps below!

As a Facility Administrator, log in and select Tools.
The default page should be reports, if not select reports.
After choosing the facility you wish to run the reports for – you may now select either a Start Date, End Date, or both (optional).
Continue to run the report as you normally would, by selecting the drop down titled “Course Specific Facility Contact List,” to generate a report within the specific time frame.

We hope that you have found this new feature useful. If you have any suggestions that could help you through our website, we would love to know. Please send us a note on our contact page.

3 Essential In-Water Communication Skills for Public Safety Divers

Marzo 18, 2015/0 Commenti

by Dr. Thomas Powell:

Imagine you are 15 feet underwater in a zero visibility environment, alone, and searching through the unknown for the remains of another human being. You do not know the layout of the underwater environment, nor are you aware of any potential obstructions or tangle hazards. These are the moments that public safety divers deal with around the world every day. The public safety realm is one in which safety is critical and redundancy is the norm. Moments like the one described above show why equipment and action redundancies are designed, planned, and implemented.

Communication is often the thing that can calm the nerves of a public safety diver. A new diver settling into black water for the first time may be filled with anxiety and breathe so hard he or she burns through air too fast to perform a legitimate search pattern. Tenders often discover that one of their primary roles is to calm the diver on the end of their tethers. A friendly and supportive voice can help center a diver and bring him or her back to reality and back on track. When voice communications fail, the ability to help a diver remain calm may falter. For this reason, both divers and tenders need to understand and be able to perform communication activities using various redundant methods.

Voice Communication
Voice communication is the most simple and modern version of diver communication. Essentially, a diver can use a voice activated or push-to-talk system to speak openly to a base station, receiver, or tender. Surface personnel can also communicate back to the diver. In the case of wireless communications, or multiple divers with hardwired communications fed into the same surface system, the divers may also have the ability to communicate between one another. Voice communication systems allow divers to discuss plans, actions, and events as they arise. Surface personnel can be apprised of what is taking place underwater and provide direction as needed using real-time explanations. The problem with voice communication systems is that sometimes electronic systems fail underwater.

Line Signals
Line signals are another form of communication. They are a signaling method used among different types of public safety organizations to signal actions and well-being. Because so many organizations use line signals, they become an action set that can easily be transitioned into a diving environment. Line pulls are based upon the idea that the tether between a tender and diver remains taut. A certain sequence of pulls from any direction is pre-planned to have a certain meaning. Using these pull sequences, the diver and tender can remain in communication when voice-based systems fail. To remain competent in the use of line signals, they must be practiced by divers and tenders. Divers must work search patterns and practice keeping the tether line tight. Simultaneously, the diver must practice relying on the tender for directional cues. Without directional cues, the diver may perform an improper search pattern if he or she does not have the ability to see. If these actions are not practiced, both divers and tenders will forget line-pull sequences and perform poorly during critical situations.

The availability of voice communication systems often make dive teams lazy in the sense that they rely too much on the electronic systems and do not practice redundant communication methods. The other factor that must be remembered is that divers are rarely tethered together barring situations such as ice dives. This reality suggests that line pull signals are not often available for divers to communicate between one-another unless a diver-to-diver tether is put into place. For this reason, hand signals are essential as a redundant form of underwater communication between divers.

Hand Signals
Finally, hand signals are one of the most basic forms of underwater communication. All divers know them and practice them throughout all forms of scuba training. Hand signals work between divers underwater when all other forms of communication fail. The catch is that divers choosing to dive together must work to understand what certain hand signals mean. Different divers may choose to use imperial or metric gauges (different measurements to signal), or to express information using different methods. To prevent confusion or misunderstanding, divers must verbally and visually walk through hand signals on the surface before entering the water.

Public safety divers must also practice tactile hand signals. In the public safety world, black or brown water environments are common. Environments such as these often eliminate visibility and the potential use of common diver-to-diver hand signals. Tactile hand signals are based on the idea of one diver touching another diver in a certain manner that has pre-determined meaning. When divers cannot see, tactile hand signals allow those divers to communicate through basic touch. Again, these types of hand signals must be practiced to ensure understanding and basic use prior to diving.

Communication is critical for public safety divers. Divers must know they are supported by a surface team that understands the situation, and surface personnel must know how best to protect and support divers under the water. When one method of communication fails, the failure may be based on an incident endangering a diver. For this reason, redundancies are essential when communication is involved. Line and hand signals allow a diver to communicate with other divers or a tender when electronic communication systems fail. To remain safe and competent, divers must practice and train in the use of redundant communication methods. Practice will ensure muscle memory and clear mental recall of communication methods. Safety is critical in the public safety world, and with practice and training public safety dive teams can set themselves up for success.

– Dr. Thomas Powell
Owner/Instructor Trainer – Air Hogs Scuba, Garner, NC

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