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Online fire officer training from Mike

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Distance Learning Course for New or Aspiring Fire Officers Taught by Mike Ward

CentreLearn Solutions, the leading provider of online training for fire and emergency medical services, announced a Fire Officer Training Program, taught by Mike Ward BS, MGA, MIFireE. The 7-part online course will begin on March 13, 2013, and delivered will include presentations, discussions, and assignments on:

  • The role of the new fire officer
  • Managing the fire company
  • Imposing order on chaos
  • Tactical lessons from near-miss and line of duty death events
  • Getting involved in the community
  • Advanced tools for the experienced fire officer
Further details on each topic, as well as scheduling information, can be found below.

To register, have your department's CentreLearn administrator contact CentreLearn now. 

Chief Billy Goldfeder, EFO, had this to say: “Mike's decades of experience combined with his focus on education-and his very cool ability to communicate will allow the students to make this program one of the absolute highlights of their career. If we are lucky, each of us will have a fire officer/instructor in our career that mattered. Someone who helped us "get it," about our responsibility as an officer. Mike more than "gets it"-and spending time learning from Mike online, or otherwise, couldn't be a better opportunity for future company officers, and those who need their batteries charged.”

Need for Fire Officer Training

“Department chiefs have repeatedly told me they are seeking training programs to prepare their firefighters to become effective fire officers. Because of the importance of this course content, we are inviting each of our client fire departments to enroll one firefighter at no cost,” said Greg Friese, CentreLearn’s Director of Education. Additional firefighters from CentreLearn organizations can enroll at a substantial discount. CentreLearn is also opening the course to fire departments not yet using CentreLearn’s industry leading learning management system. 

Fire Officer Training Program Description
Improve your fire officer effectiveness. Learn from an experienced fire officer and educator who has spent decades preparing firefighters for promotion. This training program will cover how to be a leader within the unique municipal environment of a fire station, managing your boss, managing emergency incidents (beyond ICS), tactical lessons learned from near-miss and line-of-duty deaths, managing through others, involving the community, and advanced fire officer management/leadership tools. Participants will role play in the fictional Wombat City Fire Department as they apply the concepts covered.

Sessions 1 through 4 will focus on the new fire company officer (Fire Officer I). Sessions 5 and 6, as well as a bonus 7th session for users that attend all seven sessions, will be focused on the experienced officer (Fire Officer II). Each session will be offered twice to maximize availability for busy career or volunteer firefighters.

Session 1: THE NEW FIRE OFFICER

Wednesday, March 13(1100) / (1900) (all times ET)
*there will be homework assigned at the end of each session that participants will be expected to complete before the next session. 

Session 2: MANAGING THE FIRE COMPANY
Wednesday, March 20 (1100) / (1900)

Session 3: IMPOSING ORDER ON CHAOS
Wednesday, March 27 (1100) / (1900)

Session 4: TACTICAL LESSONS FROM NEAR-MISS AND LODDs
Wednesday, April 3 (1100) / (1900)

Session 5: GETTING INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITY
Wednesday, April 10 (1100) / (1900)

Session 6: ADVANCED TOOLS FOR THE EXPERIENCED FIRE OFFICER
Wednesday, April 17 (1100) / (1900)

Bonus Session 7: SECRETS FROM LEGENDARY FIRE COMMANDERS
Wednesday, May 1 (1100) / (1900)

About Mike Ward 
Mike Ward is a retired Captain II from a large urban county, and has been teaching and preparing Fire Officers on the streets, in the classroom and online. Author of Jones and Bartlett’s "Company Officer: Principles and Practice" and writes as the Fossilmedic on Firegeezer.com, Ward provides a problem-solving approach to company officer training.

With the bar set high for this course, Mike Ward added, “The students in this course can expect to learn from one another as we work through different leadership scenarios and challenges.” The training program will conclude with a closing presentation and discussion on the secrets of legendary fire commanders.

About CentreLearn Solutions
CentreLearn Solutions offers full service Internet training solutions to emergency services organizations of all sizes. Organizational clients receive unlimited access to accredited online educational programs, and support for developing and delivering custom content. CentreLearn offers the industry’s most powerful suite of fully-hosted learning and content management tools. For more information, visit http://www.centrelearn.com/.

Posted by Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P at 4:18 PM   

Categories: ,

From Mike:

I have been working with Greg Freise on this concept since the summer.  

Excited at the opportunity, hope that you register for the class.

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Posted by on January 24, 2013 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, Firefighting Operations, News, Training, Urban Commander • Tagged: , , , ,

Zero to Hero: EMT street time does not impact success as a paramedic

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A year working as an EMT before starting paramedic school is a waste of time

After three years working on implementation of the 2009 Educational Standards and three months immersed in EMT instruction this summer, it is clear that spending a year riding on an ambulance has scant benefit in improving your performance as a paramedic student in a CoAEMSP accredited paramedic program.

The gory details can be found in this article posted on ems1.com:

EMT experience not needed for paramedic certification

 

 

 

 

Greg Friese, Rob Theriault, and Bill Toon get together every Wednesday night to discuss ems education issues, 144 sessions to date.

Tonight I am joining them to discuss this ems1.com article.

Go to EMS EdUCast for details.

 

 

 

 

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Posted by on September 12, 2012 • Filed under: EMS Topics, Patient Management, Training, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Product Review – The Kindle Fire Tablet

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Today we present Part Two of a four-part series on devices to download and read digital publications known as eBooks. An eccentric genius named Michael S. Hart invented the eBook (and gave it its name) in the mid-1960's. His first entry into the ether was a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Today there are tens of millions of eBooks and other publications available, and for the past nine months they have taken over from print media in terms of numbers sold.

Part One, which was posted Tuesday HERE reviewed the Kindle e-reader.  Today we review the Kindle Fire tablet and Thursday we will look at the Kindle app. for laptops.  On Friday we conclude with a look at smartphone apps. for eBooks.  Next week we will tell you about some eBooks written by firefighters and EMS people that are available and selling well already.

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The Kindle Fire, a Review
by Greg Friese

The Kindle Fire is the 7” tablet from Amazon.com. Powered by the Android operating system the Kindle Fire delivers adequate to outstanding functionality as a web browser, streaming audio and video player, e-Book reader, gaming device, and buying machine.

I have had the Kindle Fire, my first tablet computer, since late November. Since then I have used it primarily to read many ebooks, read and delete lots of email, update my social network status, and watch the first season of Arrested Development.

Previous Kindle Experience

Before the Kindle Fire I had read several books on a gently used 1st generation Kindle that was given to me by a friend. I enjoyed the reading experience on the digital ink screen and the speed of downloading new books. I also added the Kindle android app to my smartphone. I quickly adapted to reading on the backlit phone display and tended to read on my phone since it was always with me. The 1st generation was quickly collecting dust as I read many books on my phone, including the 2nd and 3rd books of the Millennium trilogy. While the free Kindle reading app works great the primary limitation is constantly turning pages. Lots and lots of swiping.

What I Like

I selected the Kindle Fire because of the price, $199 which is several hundred dollars less than the cheapest iPad. I was also drawn to the intention of the Kindle Fire to create a whole new space for handheld tablets rather than the other Android powered tablets that are trying to compete with the iPad.

Initially the Kindle Fire had a little more heft than I expected but as I have become used to size I appreciate its weight and dimensions. It is easy to hold in front of me like a book, light enough to rest on my lap while I watch a video, and durable enough that I don’t hesitate to hand it to my kids for them to play games and read books.

Out of the box my Kindle Fire was already synced to my Amazon.com account and after connecting to my Wi-Fi network and completing a software update my previous Kindle purchases were immediately available on the Kindle Fire. From unboxing to operational only took a couple of minutes.

The Kindle Fire, unlike the other Kindle products, has a digital backlit display and a touch screen. I think the screen is vibrant and easy to read. Video aficionados might complain about the video quality, but for my needs and budget it is more than adequate. One of the touted benefits of the digital ink screen, available on other Kindle models, is the ability to read while in bright sunlight. This is relatively meaningless to me since I don’t sit in the direct sun to read. I will always pick a shady spot. So far I have yet to find lighting conditions, from my home to my office to the car to the airplane, that the ambient light made it difficult to read the screen.

The Kindle Fire is a high powered buying machine. It is seamlessly integrated with Amazon.com. I have used it to purchase everything from hardcover books to ebooks to Frank Lloyd Wright legos to a dozen jars of Jiff Natural Crunchy peanut butter. The Kindle Fire includes a free month of Amazon Prime (annual price of $79). Prime membership includes 2 day free shipping on tens of thousands of items and unlimited streaming of thousands of television shows and motion pictures. My month of membership corresponded perfectly with the Christmas shopping season and we purchased more from Amazon.com than ever before. Pretty clever play by Amazon. After the free trial ended I signed up for the annual Amazon Prime subscription.

Most books are available for the Kindle and prices range from free to $15 or more with most titles available for $9.99 or less. As an added benefit Kindle owners can receive a free book each month from the Kindle lending library. Not all titles are available but I was able to read the first two books of the Hunger Games trilogy in my first two months of ownership. I couldn’t wait another month for the third book so I bought it.

Every day more and more ebooks are available through my local public library. The interface to find and check-out books is not very intuitive, but after some false starts I have figured out. In a simple, but multiple step process I can find a book available through the library, place a hold on the book, receive email notification that the book is available, check out the book through the library, link to Amazon, and download the book for a 7 or 14 day lending period. It only takes a couple of minutes and the lending period is more than enough for me to rip through most books.

The Kindle Fire powers up quickly like a smartphone and smoothly launches applications. I use it a lot for the times when I want to simply browse the web or play a podcast rather than booting up my laptop or desktop.

The Kindle Fire only installs apps from the Amazon Android app store. I am not sure how Amazon selects apps, but the store does not have all the choices of the Android Market. Everyday the Amazon Android app store gives away a free app. The apps I have downloaded for free normally costs from $0.99 to $7.99. Some are advertisment free versions of apps I already use, like TripIt, others are games, and others are interactive ebooks. My two favorite downloads were the interactive ebooks for Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Charlie Brown Christmas that were given away just before Christmas. My kids love those stories and enjoy the interactive features built into the books.

Needs Improvement

The Kindle Fire is not perfect and iPad owners would be frustrated by the limitations of the Amazon app store, responsiveness of the touch screen, and the speed of the web browser. But if I wanted all those things I would have spent an extra $200-300. The Kindle Fire only connects to WiFi and does not connect to a 3G/4G network. Again if I wanted to spend another $30 per month on a data plan I would have bought an iPad. For the times I don’t have a WiFi signal I can use my phone to connect to the internet on a 3G network.

In my opinion the biggest limitation of the Kindle Fire is the Google apps, like gmail, Google Voice, and Google Reader, are not available in the Amazon Android app store. I can access these Google products through the web store but as phone app users know the browser is less efficient than the actual apps. I have not heard if or when the Google apps will come to the Kindle Fire, but I am hopeful.

The touchscreen on the Kindle Fire is OK. I think the screen on my Motorola Milestone phone might be more sensitive and precise to touch than the Fire. A recent software update seems to improved the Fire, but the thing that is really missing is a Swype keyboard. The auto-complete keyboard on the Fire is good and must have some sort of memory of my frequently used words, but my words per minute is much less than my swype keyboard.

The other thing that is really missing from the Kindle Fire is a microphone. I didn’t realize how often I was using voice search on my smartphone until I started talking to my Kindle with no results. A microphone would allow voice search, speech to text writing, and making calls with Skype or Google Voice.

The Kindle Fire is for You

If you spend lots of time away from your desktop computer and want to have a tablet for reading, web browsing, and watching videos the Kindle Fire is a great device. The price is low enough that loss or damage would not be crippling financially, especially when compared to losing an iPad or laptop computer. Also if you regularly have WiFi access – in your home, station, or ambulance – the Kindle Fire can get you online quickly to browse, shop, or read your favorite blogs like Fire Geezer or Everyday EMS Tips.

Read More about the Kindle Fire
3 Kindle Fire Feature Requests
3 Ways to Get the Most out of your Kindle Fire
3 Lists of Trilogy Books
Books for the Everyday EMS Reader

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Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is the Director of Education for CentreLean Solutions, LLC. He writes the Everyday EMS Tips blog and co-hosts the EMSEduCast Podcast. Greg is a paramedic, educator, author, speaker, and marathon runner. Connect with him @gfriese or Facebook.com/gfriese.

Tomorrow:  Part Three, Kindle Apps for Laptops.

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Posted by on January 4, 2012 • Filed under: Product Reviews, technology, Technology & Communications • Tagged: , ,