Sunday, December 13, 2009

Schmoe Does Homework

Due to budget cuts, reorganization and convenience, the K.B.F.P.D. has outsourced some of our training. Some of the stuff that has been outsourced is the Tailboard Safety Program and didactic C.E.s for us lowly EMTs.

One vendor that our agency chose is Target Safety out of San Diego Ca. They offer various safety and training programs on line. These are validated courses that have a set amount of time each lesson requires to get through. They are interactive and have a test.

Target Safety monitors time requirements, keeps records and allows us to store videos and manuals on their server.

One of the positives of a program like this, is that you can get these required courses out of the way at your convenience. Home or at work it doesn't matter, you just log on and away you go.

One of the negatives of a program like this, is that you can get these required courses out of the way at your convenience. Home or at work it doesn't matter, you just log on and away you go.

People like me who really don't enjoy these courses have a tendency to wait until they are nearly due and then hammer them out. That's fine until you take a large amount of time off in the month that the assignments are due.

I have until the 30th to complete 18 one hour courses. It won't be any problem as long as I remember to do it. I got three of them out the way today. A couple per day and it will be no sweat.



This is one of the small safety messages that they display on the log in page. I guess they don't really want us texting while driving the rigs. It's not like we're driving a train or flying a plane to Minneapolis or anything.



This is one of the CE lessons that I worked on today. This particular page dealt with developmental disabilities, a subject that I am intimately familiar with. Ignore the bottle, it is part of a cognitive study that I was working on while taking this course. My test scores dropped significantly while taking this test, but my overall opinion on the class actually rose as time went on. Odd.



This is the payoff. 24 of these little Jessies over an 18 month period and you are done. Just don't wait until December.

Even though I grouse a little about the program, I do support it. It takes quite a burden off what's left of our training division. My issues with it are primarily me, not the program.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend, sorry to all of my readers in Chicago, the Packers came through and were victorious.

Thanks for reading,

Schmoe

5 comments:

  1. Dear Captain Joseph Schmoe,
    Certificate earning always goes better with root beer. I'm assuming it was the Queen of Root Beers, hand-made in Louisiana at Abita Springs, with real cane sugar, real sassafras, and real Abita Springs water.

    But you gotta watch out for that sassafras . . .

    Ann T.

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  2. Nursing CEUs have gone digital too. Over a couple months I did enough of them to restore my Kansas RN. I actually did learn stuff, and it reminded me of why I do what I do.

    Football? Was there football yesterday? There was something going on at the local KCMO stadium, but I am not sure it was football...

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  3. John - Oh yeah baby, they were there.

    Ann T. I must admit i enjoy your every day common root beer, but have not tried the Abita Springs variety. If the Widmer Bros. ever start brewing it, I will be sure to give it a try. I'm sure my test scores will stay at their usual high level.

    Observer - The digital on-line CE thing is convenient for the district, I am not really sure the quality is the same when they used to hire an RN to come in and teach a refresher class. With a mean DI Training chief standing by to make sure no one gave the RN a hard time, we got some serious learnin' done.

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  4. I tend to side with our chief when it comes to technology - train and communicate face-to-face as much as possible. Recently I enjoyed taking the CFITrainer.net modules online so I could apply for NFA's Investigation course. I got the certs, but nothing beats learning in a classroom with other people, doing scenarios and good Q & A time.

    Don't get me wrong - saving money's good. Our department is thinking of putting BBP, Harassment, and SOPs and SOGs on the server and doing refreshers at least semi-annually. It's a problem hunting down paid-on-call to keep up-to-date, but that's the nature of the game.

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