User:Jazzmanian

Personal Pathfinder Info
My real name is Gerald. I have been a Pathfinder leader since joining the Woodlands Pathfinder Club with my older son in the fall of 2003. That means as of the 11-12 year, I am in my ninth year of service. Woodlands Pathfinder Club is sponsored by the Ponoka SDA church in Ponoka, Alberta, Canada. Our motto is "Light Your World".

I was a member of the College Heights (Lacombe) club for one or two seasons when I was Explorer age. Although I'm not sure what happened to my badges from then, I do remember earning Cycling, Archery, and Winter Camping. I was invested along with my wife as a Master Guide at our clubs investiture service, held at the beach, in the spring of 2007, and recently invested as a PLA at Alberta Campmeeting, 2009, and pinned by James Black. The Alberta Conference has been very helpful in holding seminars during staff training sessions. Two of my favorite honours to have taught since becoming a leader are Sailing and Music.

I have completed my Language Study honour, by taking Spanish classes at my local college. Hola a todos. Estoy aprendiendo español.

What I do besides Pathfinders
I graduated from Canadian University College with my diploma in Computer Technology in 1987. Since then I have worked primarily in some form of information technology. Mostly I have been a network server support analyst, but am currently a database administrator/programmer at a community college. I have also worked as a Lifeguard/Swimming instructor, Ski Patrol, and music instrument salesman/repair technician, among other things. I have done freelance work as a graphic artist, and contribute regularly to open source graphic repositories such as wikicommons and openclipart.org.

Since I work at a community college, I started taking a few music theory classes for interest, and ended up graduating with a diploma in Music (theory and composition/trumpet), in 2004. This interest on the side is the reason I like teaching the music honour. I am passionately interested in all things music. I currently play trumpet in a variety of bands and groups. I also play flute or french horn in our community concert band, and guitar for song services with the Pathfinders.

Other hobbies and sports I enjoy are hiking, backpacking, fishing, cycling, swimming, woodworking, drawing, computer clipart, geocaching, crafts, photography, and many more interests.

Why I contribute to the wiki-book
My interest in working on this wiki-book started as I found myself writing workbooks, and instuctor guides for honours myself, and wondering why the resoures to teach Pathfinders are so scarce and hard to come by. Shipping binders of paper containing rather dated information across the continent seemed like such a cumbersome way to deliver information to our Pathfinder leaders and staff. When I took my basic staff training we studied the section on recruiting volunteers, and during that session I was wondering how many more volunteers would be willing to step forward, if we could provide them with a precise, and easy to follow resources for teaching the ciriculum. What an ideal situation if there was a uniform workbook and instructors guide for each honour, or level topic, available online for directors to retrieve and print on demand. I see this wiki-book as a good start in that direction. I consider working on this project from time to time as part of "Doing my honest part".