Spring Fever!

Spring is always a busy time for events and meetings. The state SkillsUSA Championships are going on across the country. I spent the day this past Friday at the Georgia  International Convention Center in Atlanta viewing the competition. Shumate Mechanical provided all the judges for the HVACR competition. I was very impressed by the way they interacted with the students encouraging and teaching them. Kudos to Shumate for going out of their way to help with the SkillsUSA Contest. I was also impressed by the poise and professionalism of all the contestants. It is not easy to work under a microscope with judges and spectators peering at you while you work. They only had 18 minutes to complete each task, adding to the stress level. But despite these pressures, they all held up admirably. Along the way, the students competing learn more than HVACR skills, they learn something about themselves. Taking up the challenge and seeing it through requires a lot of effort above and beyond the normal demands of most HVACR programs. I was very proud of the preparation and hard work Keith Watermann from my program put into the competition and his hard work showed. The winners of the state contests will meet in Kansas City later this summer June 19-24  for the national championships. 


The National HVACR Educators and Trainers Conference starts Sunday, March 20^th in Las Vegas. However, if you are not registered already you will miss it because it is sold out. I spoke with Howard Weiss, and he said he hated to keep people out, but they have reached the maximum number of people the fire code will allow in the room! If you are lucky enough to be registered, be sure and say hello to David Skaves, my writing partner on Fundamentals of HVACR. He will be at the Pearson booth and he will be speaking at 9:15 on Monday on Strategies for Connecting with Today’s Student in the Age of Electronics. 


If you missed the Las Vegas show, you can still catch the HVACR & Mechanical Instructor’s Workshop in Landsdowne, Virginia at the National Conference Center. This longest running HVACR Instructor’s workshop was started by ARI and today is supported by an impressive list of industry heavy hitters including AHRI, ACCA, ACTE, CARE, HARDI, HRAI, NAOHSM, NATE, PHCC, RSES, SkillsUSA. It is March 23-25 and there is still room. It is too late to register online, but you can still register at the Conference Center. The Conference is free if you stay at the National Conference Center. There is a $65 per day fee if you are staying elsewhere. Freddie Williams will be there at the Pearson booth. He is the author of the MyHVACLab material. Freddie is the man to talk to if you have questions about using online material in your program. Besides being the author of MyHVACLab, he has extensive experience with both Blackboard and Angel. If you cannot go to anything this year, just remember next January to start planning your strategy for attending one of these events. It does take some planning, but it is worth the effort.  

HVAC/R Instructor's Conferences Coming in March

Two national instructor’s workshops are coming soon – one on the west coast and one on the east coast. The HVAC Excellence National HVACR Educators and Trainers Conference is this coming week March 20 – 2 at the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. The HVACR & Mechanical Instructor’s Workshop is later the same week, March 23 – 25 in Landsdowne Virginia. This workshop is sponsored by a group of eleven industry organizations, including AHRI who initially started this annual workshop over a decade ago. Both conferences have an impressive list of speakers and topics. David Skaves will be speaking at the Las Vegas conference. He is co-author of the new AHRI text Fundamentals of HVAC/R. If you can find a way to attend one of these conferences you won’t be disappointed. They are well worth your time. Unlike generic teacher’s conferences that target all subjects, these are specific to our field. And unlike industry showcases like ComforTech or the AHR show, these are specifically for teachers. As a result, everything you see will have a direct application to teaching HVAC/R.

I know that times are tough and getting funding and permission to go is difficult. When presenting the idea to your school administrators be sure to forward a copy of the program from the conference(s) that you want to attend. Both the National Educators and Trainers Conference in Las Vegas and the HVACR & Mechanical Instructor’s Workshop have well done professional programs on the web (click on the conference name). Be sure to note the large number of educational sessions. There are literally more sessions than you will have time to attend. Point out that attending will keep you informed about emerging technology like communicating systems. Point out that by attending you will be better positioned to integrate green mechanical concepts into your curriculum as a result of attending the conferences.

Keep the Discussion on Track

I attended the 2010 HVACR & Plumbing Instructor Workshop at the National Conference Center in Landsdowne, VA this past week. This past couple of weeks has been both tiring and rewarding. I often pick up ideas and teaching tips just by watching other people work. I went to see Wes Davis of ACCA discuss system efficiency and picked up a simple and effective idea for handling questions that could possibly sidetrack the discussion. I am particularly bad about exploring questions and ideas that students pose during my lectures because my lectures are often more discussions than lectures. However, if the discussion gets too far away from the outline, you run the risk of missing important points and losing most of your audience while you are engaging in exploratory oratory. Don’t get me wrong, I believe you should encourage questions. However, it is important to also keep the discussion moving forward in an organized and logical manner. Wes had a large flip chart with the title Parking Lot at the top. Whenever a question came up that did not fit well into the flow of the lecture, he wrote it down in the parking lot. The idea is to acknowledge the question and come back to it, while avoiding a possibly distracting trip down a side alley of thought. I noticed that many of the parking lot questions were eventually answered later on in his presentation. He addressed the ones that were left at the end, and this discussion created more questions and discussion. Putting questions in the parking lot allowed the flow of the presentation to continue while still encouraging questions. Actually writing the questions down insured they would be addressed and showed that he was not just dismissing the questions. Then when the questions were addressed it seemed to get the group’s juices flowing and created lively discussion. There were many good power point presentations that will be put up on the CARE website. You have to be a member of CARE to see many of them, but one good power point presentation is worth the $25 cost of joining CARE. I would recommend that you join CARE and go to the resources they have on their site for their members. The CARE website is http://www.carehvacr.org/