The second class that I had the opportunity to take over the weekend was Intro to Emergency Comms by Everyday Citizens Tactical. Jeremy had to make some last-minute adjustments due to changes in classroom location, and despite that, he still put on a very informative and helpful lesson.
Jeremy constructed this 4 hour course to be a planning and operations focused course rather than a deep dive into the technical operation of radios. That being said, he still gave a thorough foundational explanation of the basic principles of Radio. His approach was to give the basic theory of radios and then offer theoretical situations to challenge the students to contribute to a productive comms/emergency plan. And good attention was spent on principles that are common across all methods of communication - security, standard operating procedures, safety, etc.
I found this approach to be extremely relevant and useful for this class format, because in my experience with comms, we tend to get bogged down in the technical "how to" aspects of the skill and can tend to lose sight of the "why" and "when" dynamics of the application. For example, you can spend a lot of time and energy on a robust UHF radio system, but if the circumstances are not relevant to that systems strengths, then much of that information and infrastructure is useless for the case.
Lastly, Jeremy spent a lot of time answering questions that were specific to his students use-case scenarios and is really displayed a wealth of information on this topic due to his professional experience and private research in the civilian sector. Jeremy's teaching style was direct, to the point, no fluff kind of personality. He didnt spend much time on personal stories and jokes, but still provided a comfortable laid back experience. He is clearly convicted about the importance of the material he teaches.
Critique: I can see how such a complex topic can be incredibly hard to scan over in a 4 hour slot. As such, people who are brand new to radios may have had some difficulties keeping up with the acronyms, theory, etc. Especially with such an academic style of a class, I think that an acronym list would help with this, and some work sheets for students to interact with the material a little more physically could foster different angles of learning for various types of thinkers.
Disclaimer: I've known Jeremy for a long time (and probably see his class with some bias) and I have a discount code for his IFAKs that I do not profit from.
