New course added at NESA

[arajca]

I want to back up what Mike just said.  I actually work at the ICSS school where Comm is done.  Lt Col Bishop was the lead instructor the last couple of years while the comm school was being developed.  Some of the material was "beta" tested there including ICUT.  I believe what was going on was that since comm was evolving over the last couple of years things changed too fast to put materials online.  But it is definitely the attitude that we share it all online.   As the guy who puts it out there for you all to see each school has a curriculum page.

The so-called "Curriculum" pages are nothing but a series of links to old power point presentations that have been around for at least eight years. To use them, whoever is instructing will need to spend considerable time developing their own instructor's guide.

[Eclipse]

That's the problem with a lot (the majority?) of CAP "curriculum" - they depend far too heavily on the presenter being knowledgable
about not only the subject, but also the thought process of whomever created the slides.

Slides do not a training program make.

[JeffDG]

Someone, please, invest in a copy of Camtasia Studio for these!

Run the slides, record voiceover and everything, upload to YouTube for "Play Anywhere" ability.

[bflynn]

Actually, you can do it with CamStudio for free.

[JeffDG]

Nevermind...

I'm just used to Camtasia...I have a copy for work, so it's what I use all the time.

[Storm Chaser]

I can tell you that the lead instructor is not Lt Col Bishop this year.  Major John Randolph from ALWG is the lead instructor. [emphasis mine]

I'm not familiar with this comm course, so I can't really give an opinion about it. But I know Maj John Randolph and he's a very competent professional. He was the chief of staff of the Alabama Wing Emergency Services School for this last cycle and was recognized for doing a superb job. I expect him to do the same at NESA.

[Larry Mangum]

ACON,

Major Randolph, is slated to be the lead instructor for MRO training. He is not running the ICSS Comm School.

[Storm Chaser]

I see that NESA website now shows Maj Randolph as lead instructor for the basic comm course. He was previously showing as lead instructor for the intermediate course.

[sarflyer]

Well I felt it necessary to defend the NESA honor and forgot that CAPTalk is full of "Opinions", not fact.

Oh well, my bad.

[arajca]

Opinion: I'm not a fan of the school.

Fact: They are not willing (or at least for the last several years) willing to share the comm school curriculum.

Opinion: The HF/ALE slides used by the comm school and released for general CAP use suck.

Fact: There are no notes to assist in delivering the material.
Fact: Several standard practices for slides were ignored by the author.
Fact: No materials were released to assist with using the slides.

Opinions are usually derived from facts and experiences.

Nowhere did I say the school sucks or the instructors are poor.

[Larry Mangum]

It is a fact, that materials were not released for several years as they were in a transition phase. In fact NHQ wants to change the direction of the school from training MRO's and CUL to more one of proving training for Wing and Region DC's on how to mange the wing comm program and assets.

[kd8gua]

I took the Intermediate Course last year at NESA. It was taught at the same time as the Basic school (week 1). The intermediate course covers many of the additional ICUT modules that have yet to be released. Some of the modules included the recent releases on HF-ALE. The intermediate school assumes the student is somewhat proficient in the actual use of VHF and ISR radios. Much of the work we did was to supervise and assist the Basic school in putting up the 292 mast kits, as well as working with various setups for the HF RDP. We also went into antenna theory, HF propagation, and discussed setups of HF and VHF antennas.

The modules yet to be released are all geared towards CUL types, as well as Comm Officers at any level. We worked on creating Comm plans from a logistics standpoint, making sure any necessary line of communication was covered.

I learned a ton in that class, and finally put my knowledge to use at our SAREVAL last month, when we made a record number of HF contacts using an antenna design I was familiar with from the Comm school.

Any questions, feel free to ask or PM.