PADI Applies Environmentalism to Membership

PADI recently announced the new instructor renewal pricing, which (aside from paying more on auto-renew) I think is great. The best part is their distribution of the new Instructor Manual as well.

In the past, as a PADI SCUBA instructor, you had a few choices when it came to your instructor manual:

1. Hand-modify your manual with the updates as they became available.  Eventually, this got messy and ugly and you’d want to upgrade. For those of us with Instructor Manuals, Specialty Instructor Manuals and Course Director Manuals, this got costly (and time consuming).
2. Just buy them once a year or so. Again, fairly expensive.
3. The last several years, they would send out a CD-based digital Instructor Manual, which I thought was great.

Now, however, it looks as though they realize broadband is widespread and bandwidth is cheap as a content provider, so now they will be allowing us to download a digital instructor manual! Now all of the Project AWARE concepts of conservation are being utilized for us, the SCUBA instructors!

Thanks PADI for making this more cost effective and easier to stay up to date. Any word on doing this type of thing with the Course Director manual too?

If you’re a PADI instructor, do you like the idea of being able to download a digital instructor manual or do you still prefer a printed version?