I asked jason uh to come on and just talk to us a little bit, because jason is one of the names on the big book that we've got here, so the refrigeration air conditioning technology, uh guide. You are now one of the primary authors right. Yes, there's we're down to two: okay: the uh bill, johnson, uh and uh whitman and johnson have all retired okay. So a lot of their content is still in there, but you're kind of updating it and um correct, and all that.

So i guess to start with um, if you wouldn't mind just kind of introducing yourself and kind of how you got into the trade and then we'll go from there talk a little bit about uh racked and some of the other things that you're up to well. My name is jason. I've been in the trade for longer than i'd like to two decades. Now i taught for 15 years.

I was a contractor technician for 15 years and i moved into writing content. Smaller books, larger books, lab manuals. That sort of thing when i figured i had an act for it. While i was teaching uh years and years ago, i used to work on a produce market in the refrigerated systems, and that was the doc foreman and i would notice that every time we had to have the cooler repaired, we have to shut everything down and this Crew would come out and do all this work on these coolers and they were making good money.

They were on call, they were always working and i figured that's what i'm going to do next and eventually, when we got laid off, i went into school to learn how to do air conditioning refrigeration ventilation, and here we are today, 20 years later, have you always Lived and worked kind of in the chicagoland area generally yes born and raised in chicago. I recently moved about 90 minutes east into indiana. So what's really cool about about rat? There's a lot of cool things about it, but it's the book that a lot of us came up through the industry and you know so for you you're writing the book now you're editing it and writing it and improving it and updating it. But i'm sure it's also the book that you probably learned on as well uh.

Yes, it is the manual that i taught with that. I learned with we used it since the just the end of the fourth edition into the fifth edition. A new addition comes out. Roughly every four years, so, if you you know, if you do the math it's 20 years, i believe from the fifth edition to the ninth edition end of the fourth edition.

That's so, yes, i've been using it for the last 20 years and to finally be writing in it and editing it and updating it is uh is a dream. I remember the uh, i think it was. I guess we called it the blue book. It was kind of more of a purple, that's what we called it: the blue book yeah.

We called it the blue book back in the day and uh. When i was at west side. That's what i learned in and it was it's been really cool to get to know you and eugene, and also you know, bill johnson's been on the podcast. There's a lot of it's cool to just meet everybody and how down to earth everyone is.

This group is all like we kind of talked about before jason and i talked a little bit about y'all and what we're doing um. This group is all you know, working in the field uh to one degree or another varying levels of experience, and so the reason that i've brought jason here is to talk a little bit about. You know just generally about how to get the most out of education, but then also to talk about how to get the most out of a textbook like rack, i mean specifically, react is what we're going to be referencing a lot, and it is an amazing and Amazing text with lots of uh really relevant information, but i think a lot of people see a book. That's this big and it was actually the comments that we got.

While i was handing it out. You know a few mileage of my car is going to drop with the weight of this book. You know that sort of thing, so i think it's important for us to know how to get the most out of a text like this when we get to the size of the book. The first thing i'll give you a little tip is: if you look at the way the book is organized by chapter and then in each chapter, you'll have different what we call a heads.

1.1. 1.2. 1.3. If you take a long chapter, that's 30 or 40 pages and you break it down into those smaller sections, it's a lot more easy easier.

I should say to digest so trying to take the whole thing on as one big uh paperweight. Yes, that's gon na be tough to do that's a tall order. I would recommend you know if we're working in chapter three to take the individual sections and and read them in that manner to uh to break it down into smaller segments. When we tend to watch videos - and we see or an article, we see it's one page long, we'll click on it, but if it's 15 pages we're not as likely to uh click on that and read all 15 pages.

So if you take the chapters and you break them down into the smaller sections, it becomes a lot easier to digest to take in another thing that i just want to mention quickly, because the first thing you you do when you grab a book like this, i Mean i don't know if everybody does it, but i certainly do it. Is you open it up and you start looking at the pretty pictures right? Yes, there are a lot of images yeah. You just look at the pretty pictures right and that's and that's good - and there are a lot of really great illustrations - interact over multiple, multiple uh generations of equipment and so those different things, but for that person who's prone to do that. Do you have any tips of like how to maybe get a little more out of it? So you know, let's say you want to sit down and study and maybe you're, maybe you're studying a little bit about the gas laws.

And so you sit down and at home, and you want to learn more because again, i'm mostly focused on people who are already in the field and they get a big book like that. What would you, what would you say would be a helpful way of approaching that as far as diving into a subject? That's not as thrilling as you say, like the gas laws or something exactly yeah yeah. Well, one of the things i would do before you sit down and get into a chapter that again, you may feel is not as exciting as some of the other chapters. I would say to first each chapter: each area has the learning outcomes of the learning objectives and, at the end of the chapter there are review questions.

So before you even read the chapter, i would recommend going and reading those objectives and reading those questions, even though you're not going to be able to answer them yet you're going to get an idea for what's going to be covered, how in depth what areas are Being targeted and as you read you're going to start to see things that become familiar to you because you've read them in the outcomes. You've read them in the questions and now you can start answering some of these questions as you're reading. So it kind of gives you that feeling that you, you already know this, even though you're just learning it as you read it before you start any given chapter again, read the outcomes. Read the questions over take in what they're asking you know, look at what the outcomes say: you're going to learn and then, as you start reading again you're going to see things that become familiar to you and it's going to be a lot easier to digest.

That way, just from a general standpoint, you have a ton of experience in educating people in a structured environment. Um where you, you know, you have outcomes in mind and you're working through things, where i'm much more kind of free-for-all. You know you - and i have talked about this over the years when you've helped me with some things like. I am just all over the place with the things that i teach so for somebody who is, you know, maybe comes from a less organized environment.

Again, everybody here has been working to some degree, but now we want to actually be thoughtful. We want to make sure that we don't miss anything. What are some um just general things that you would give advice to me or to the class to get the most out of a trade education like this, especially something that's a big commitment. The advice to the students to the prospective students is that you have to be a willing participant in this.

You have to want to do it you're only going to get out of this, what you put into it being that you're already in the industry to some degree or another. You may have a bad day where you blow a charge or misdiagnose something or end up with a callback, and when it comes time to to sit in that classroom, you have to check that at the door. You can't bring that into the classroom with you, because it's going to affect everything that you learned that night to some degree it's going to be in the back your mind, stewing back there man, i can't believe i missed that or i did that or so again You have to when you walk into the learning environment. You got to leave all of that behind you any kind of issues that you're facing personal or business-wise.

You got to leave that at the door so that you can be open to whatever we're going to do today. As far as learning, i can tell you that if you're only exposure to the learning experiences within those four walls, there's going to be an issue, it has to extend beyond those four walls in your free time. There's a lot of digital content, media internet content. You can listen to podcasts, there's a, i know, a guy that does podcasts.

He does a pretty good job. You can read articles, you could read the big book. There are periodicals newspapers, magazines, anything that is tangential but really related to the industry. That may give you insight um.

I can tell you ask questions if there's something that you're, not sure of or you don't know, you're not sure up, ask a question, even if you think you know it ask questions. If you see something in the book or you see something in an article or hear something in a podcast that kind of upset the way you understand something ask questions in the hvac industry. I'll tell you this that, if all things are correct, we work with the invisible everything that we do is invisible. We have to rely on our tools.

Electricity is invisible. Heat transfer, technically refrigerant should stay within the line, so everything that we're working with is going to be invisible and it's going to be up to you determine heat transfer voltage, whatever happens to be in that particular instance, and you're going to have to rely on your Instruments and your knowledge of how to use them and what those instruments are telling you to make a diagnosis. Ask questions it's very important for people who are already working in the field. One of the things that i see that comes up a lot.

Is this tension between potentially what you're learning with the journeyman or the technician that you're working with and some of the things that you're learning in the class and sometimes maybe it doesn't all fit together and sometimes you're learning things in the class that you don't feel Like applies to the field, and you know someone is over, you know having been in the field, you you get this, we all get. Yes, what are some advice that you would give to people who maybe feel that tension pretty quickly between some differences between what they're learning in class and what they're seeing on the field? That is a very tough question. I would say that until you've finished a particular lesson or a particular module or this area of the course there may be more to it. So if you're learning something in the lab or in the classroom, that's not jiving with what you're seeing in the field, it may not be you're there.

Yet there's a lot of different roads that you can take to get to the same area, meaning when someone's troubleshooting. They do it a specific way. They may travel path a and end up at the correct problem. You may travel path b but end up at the same problem.

They all look different, but they end up in the same place. So if you're seeing things that just aren't making sense, it's possible that you're not there yet or possible that your journeyman is taking shortcuts, which i've seen more often than not based on experience. I know this particular unit. I've worked on this line of units.

We know that they fail like this eighty percent of the time and they go right to it rather than taking the steps that you learned we're gon na start here then move to here a journey may say: listen i've seen ten 000 of these units. They all fail right here and they go right to that spot again. That's based on experience, you'll get to that point, as you gather experience, just remember that your journeyman, your lead, has that experience already. So there may be a learning opportunity there as well.

I want to turn it over quickly. Just before we keep going. Does anybody have any questions about anything you said so far, any thoughts or podcasts? What's the name of the podcast, so uh, so uh yeah jason was uh making. I because i have a podcast.

It's called hbc school there's, actually quite a few uh good podcasts out there on the topic of air conditioning now so hvac school is one um hvac know it all is a great podcast. He has a lot of really great content. What are some others? I'm missing here: uh shoptalk.com, uncensored, yeah hvac on sensor, yep, yep, there's quite a few. Nowadays, you type in hvac and any podcast app you'll find some good good content.

Nowadays, i can tell you the as far as like youtube and some of the podcasts and things go. It may be hard to decide or filter, what's good information and, what's not so stick with some of the more reputable ones. I would say the same thing about my students. What else? Why would i have to memorize that i can just google it then why don't i just hire google? Why am i hiring you there's things that you know there's and then once you i mean learning how to google it.

What source are you pulling this information from? Is this bob's uh air conditioning website, where he's telling you how to recover refrigerant into a bucket of water or so again trusted sites like hvac school podcast? Things like that identifying those early on that these are good sources of information yeah, and i think it's also critical to recognize that nobody is ever perfect, but it's more about the tone of the desire. You know the tone being the desire to do things professionally and the very best way possible right without shortcutting things or doing things that are inappropriate. Talk a little bit about um, some things that are uh, maybe new or some things that you've changed with the latest revision of the refrigeration air conditioning technology manual. There was this one was quite an overhaul.

The gas heating chapter was completely redone, updated to incorporate some of the modulating and variable capacity stuff. There was an update to the mini split systems. We added the chilled beam systems which are gaining popularity in commercial spaces. I had to remake a lot of schematics and a lot of the images drawing them out in illustrator to correct errors or misconceptions, or the way things could be taken on a lot of the diagrams and schematics.

There were some corrections made and there was a lot of additional content in the area of digital controls. Variable speed, stuff, inverter things updates for the technology that the field is seeing right now talk a little bit about some of the other. You know supplemental things that go along with rack because there's the manual but then there's a lot a lot else that goes with that and i'm in this position right now, where you know we're we're just starting this thing. So we're looking to do what's very important and i'm not experienced with all of the different features, so talk a little bit about everything that goes along with that.

So the publisher cengage has a lot of online content, a lot of digital content to supplement all of the textbooks from the different trade from all of their books. Actually, they have something called mindtap, which is the online dashboard for all of their different titles and for the instructor supplements, you would sign into a mindtap instructor account, and there are a lot of extras that you get with the book. For you know in the instructor account there's powerpoint presentations. There are videos for each chapter that eugene the other author did introducing you to each chapter kind of telling you what you're going to cover and what you'd expect to get from this chapter.

And why is it important to the book so there's that little feel that you're you're speaking directly to the author, the author, is speaking directly to you. These are again all in cengage online. If you go to their their website, there's a there's, a lot of things that you can get there as far as additional material ancillary products, uh supplements for each of the books, not just the big book, the rack menu, but also uh the refrigeration book that that You're all using as well there's some really really good. Powerpoint speakers notes videos.

There are sims online there's a lot of things that cengage offers with that title online. So it's something to look into signing up for a mindtap account. I don't know how long it sucks that don't quote me on this, don't get me in any trouble, but for the for a long time they were offering a free mindtap for a lot of the titles during the the covert thing for distance learning, if you had Bought a hard copy of the book they were, they were doing a lot of the things on mindtap for free. So that's something to explore as well i'll have to reach out to the cengage reps and see where they're at with that.

But it is definitely worth your investment to do you know so that you can access things at home. The sims are worth it. The sims are pretty well done as well and on the instructor side, there's end of chapter summaries: there's quizzes, there's tests, there's all kinds of things that we wrote that you can use in class that are directly related to the book. So you can print out quizzes that we wrote questions for you, can print out and assign to the students in there who finish this quiz or that quiz or custom make a quiz there's a lot of tools in there that you can use by way of advice, Because, whatever i get get a little bit of your time or any of the people i look up to, i i like to give a little bit of advice, and so one of the complaints that sometimes happens with traditional education is that it's boring or that you Lose the attention of the students, and so what do you think are some kind of best practices in order to keep things fresh and in order to get the most out of the experience? That's a good question.

Always i mean you know as a technician or you know, and a business owner there are things that excite you and things that don't when you say, oh not this again, so you have to kind of space those things out as far as okay, we're going to Cover the psychometric chart today. Well, i might find that thrilling, but some of the students might find that extremely boring, so we're going to have to mix in some hands-on experiments to that lead back to the psychometric chart, we'll use a trainer we'll plot out a chart and then we'll show the Chart next to the trainer and see how all the numbers worked out and see: that's where that came from that's, why they do that. So when you can connect the dots from something exciting to something boring, that makes it a little bit easier to swallow. If you will again merging activities together, trying to take a topic that to to the students, may seem not this.

Today, i've had a long day and connected to something. Oh, that's pretty cool or that's interesting, something that's a little eye, opening some kind of a lab activity or some kind of a creation activity that you can parallel to it makes it a lot easier to to teach those topics. One of the things we've talked about. Uh over time, as we've talked about sort of the ideal apprenticeship program and all that is uh, always giving an opportunity to um experience the thing that you're talking about so don't just ramble on and expect somebody to have some context of what a particular thing is.

Until you've, given them some experience of that tool or component or system diagnostic error or whatever, and so that's a big part of what i want to do here - is not just lecture lecture lecture tie together all these things so that way, you're you're, hitting it from Every different facet, and also not not being unwilling to rush ahead a little bit and actually get a chance to experience something that may be a little above right, you're talking about but gives you kind of the sense of why it matters. You know because if, for example, psychometrics that's a great example, if we start on a site chart well, then i mean what could be more boring or or a molar diagram, or something like that. A pressure enthalpy diagram, those are fun pressure. Enthalpy diagrams are kind of fun once you understand what this is right, you can put them on a unit yeah exactly, but but if you start with a compressor and you show how that actually relates to a real piece of equipment or if you're talking about psychometrics In terms of like how do i keep these ducks from sweating right now that that means something that we can understand, because that's a real problem we all have to solve? You know why is this doggone air handler sweating in this garage or why are these ducks sweating in this conditioned or unconditioned attic? And now, if you look at a psychometric chart, you can actually show dewpoint and you can actually talk about these things in a way.

That means something you can use it to predict and say: listen if we put ducks in here they're going to sweat right before it happens, yeah in florida, basically, every attic in the entire state um i've experienced it. Yes, yeah yeah. So that's what we want to do here, um in terms of maybe the mindset of a technician, though who's coming into this and they're tired and they're, showing up to class - and you know you know - maybe i'm droning on it too, a little too long or whatever. What are some ways that maybe they could uh spice it up or get the most from it to kind of reduce some of that boring factor.

Ask questions participate, suggest things something that ties into today's lesson: hey brian you're, talking about this, and yesterday we were on this call, and this happened. Why and that can lead to something again to real world. Let's look at this trainer. Let's look at this piece of equipment see if we can recreate what happened to you yesterday again relevant to today's lecture or today you know this week's assignments and things someone in that class.

You may have been on a call this week last week. Something happened that they didn't quite understand really know why it happened or why the decision was made to do this, and when you start covering that and it seems to be getting long-winded as the student, you should step up and say: listen. We were on this call. This happened: why did it happen, or why did we make this decision and it ties into the lesson and we can recreate it somewhere on a piece of equipment and also just another suggestion that you just triggered in my my thoughts is: take a picture of something That you saw yesterday or something that seemed different.

Even if it's something that you you found the answer to take a picture of it and then you can bring it to the class and we can discuss it. Take a take a picture, screenshot uh readings that you've taken um and how, where you measure them, and you know and a lot of times. This is something i advocate for a lot, and i know you do too is that you know take measurements on equipment that you're working on during maintenances and things that are more routine. That then, give you that baseline of comparison to say you know why am i getting this? This equipment seems to be running okay, but this measurement doesn't seem right to me or it seems different to me and we can discuss those things.

Yeah bring those to class yeah and i guess you know everybody's kind of probably you know rolling their eyes mentally. Like oh geez, you know teacher's pet here, bringing you know, bringing demonstrations to class. But again you know. I think this is unique.

What we're talking about in terms of education is unique. We're all adults here we're doing this, because we're wanting to advance ourselves our families we're wanting to make some progress in our lives. That's the reason why we make the commitment so there's no shame in maybe being a little overly enthusiastic at times, uh about what we're doing, because that's what gets us to that next level! This is what you're deciding to do this sitting in this room, working toward a goal again to end up in a position where you're able to diagnose again you're, going to be a technician and you're going to work. Your way up from technician to lead technician to journeyman that journey could be a very slow one for some or a quick one for others, depending on how well you do how how much you put into it? How much you know what level of enthusiasm are you going to give it just to wrap up talk a little bit about the esco side of things, because you know we've talked about the big book, but there's a lot going on over at esco a lot going On with the partnership with rses a lot of resources there, so just give us an overview of what's what's up before i move on from the big book inside uh in the early content in the roman numerals, i think it's roman numeral, 23.

there's an email address That eugene and i set up that's jason and eugene, and if there are questions about content, if there's hey, this picture doesn't match this, or why did you use this image? Whatever your question may be, except you know, winning lottery numbers or those sorts of things, you can send us an email and we will respond. We do get. You know quite a few emails and the two of us monitor that address and and respond as best we can, but it's inside the uh in the front manner of the book. I think in roman numeral 23.

feel free to shoot either. You know, shoot us an email if something if you get a question or a suggestion or whatever some kind of feedback. Let me let us know. Also brian, we have a sheet that we uh developed for instructors lab activities, things that you can do in the lab.

With not having to have a 50 000 piece of equipment, but you know inexpensive ways to uh illustrate things in a lab setting, so i will send that to you. It's a word document i'll, send that to you to use with the class. Thank you that was through cengage. As far as esko goes.

We do a lot of things. We do testing certification, credentialing accreditation, we wear a lot of hats, but we do content development. We develop books manuals, those sorts of things, but on a smaller scale. So if you look at the big book, there's 50 chapters in that book that were an esko title that would be 50 different books, they're little manuals and there'd be a little exam for each one.

When you think of an esco program, it's a very topic, specific, very concentrated in one area and whatever title we have there's going to be an exam, some kind of a certification, closed book, certification, exam that goes with it. We just started up the the e-learning site and there is a lot of stuff on the e-learning side. There are videos that i make in my garage. It's called the workbench video series.

Basically, what it was is there was an issue with instructors not being able to get their students in the lab to to do the basic things test. The relay test, the capacitor show how to wire a trans. So i took my camera in the garage in the workbench and i did all these little three-minute things i wired up a transformer. I tested a contactor, i tested a relay, i wired a float switch and had it open in a drain.

Pan there's a lot of content on the e-learning side on the esko website and it's a lot of it's new. Some of it is the the programs that we've we're known for the 608, the 410a. Some of it is a new content. The gas heat is up there, there's new videos up there, there's uh contributors, there's a lot of manufacturers such as honeywell and commores that are putting videos and technical bulletins and things like that on our site, and we also have a partner site with rses, who has All of their programs they're turning a lot of their programs into e-learning, their hydrocarbon is now on their site and our site, so we partnered with them to again answer the call for the e-learning side of things, even if you're enrolled in a program where you have Your books, you have your material, you have everything the e-learning site.

These things are like a dollar a month, two dollars a month and it's access to a lot of the different content through either rses or through esko, a very good supplemental things to uh peak your mind, make you think again generate questions or generate a better understanding. Hopefully, by the time you're done with them and again that's on the esko site, there's a related site, an e-learning site as well, and you recently uh published you personally recently published a new book on gas furnaces uh. Yes, how long ago did that cost pretty recently right now yeah a year or two ago now, but we turned that into uh an e-learning course. So it's broke down by chapter.

There are small one two-minute videos, um, there's little single powerpoint slides. The text is broken down, there's little quizzes and you can progress through the course and we're doing that with all the titles. I just finished a brazing and soldering course. It's a 101 brazing and soldering course on copper, flaring, swaging, crimping, brazing, soldering, turning the gases on and off and again it's just a small booklet.

There's a certification exam. So little things like that, we did a water heater program. We did a brazing program. We have the gas heat, the heat pump, one i'm hoping to to have up by the end of the month and and again these are in an e-learning form.

So there's video there is uh script. There's powerpoint, there's quizzes! There's a lot of these little things built into these to these e-learning courses and if you look into the mindtap they're gon na, do it obviously with the a little bit bigger budget that cengage had they have a lot of similar. The sims are really good. The online activities are really good, so if you have free time your lunch hour, you're at home, something's bugging, you there's a lot that you can do outside of those four walls to learn.

Don't just think that learning only happens when you're sitting in that room with ryan there's a lot that you're gon na experience that you can again you're gon na bring hey. I saw this hey. I read this: what does it mean? What does it mean to you? Well, yeah thanks jason for doing everything you do for the industry for those, because we're gon na we're gon na publish this publicly just as kind of a reminder of what good education looks like um for those of you who are working out in the field and Maybe never read the rack manual or never read um. You know commercial refrigeration, the book that for air conditioning technicians, the book the dick read.

Those are two of my favorite broad guides for our industry and i would suggest them. I can't suggest them enough. Obviously, you're going to supplement with a lot of other things, but i get a lot of people who tell me like well, i watch your videos or oh, i read your tech tips or whatever it's like. Okay, but those are like.

I mentioned. Those are kind of all over the place and they're based on field experiences, and you know they're loose, whereas you go through the rack manual, it really hits everything super nuts and they do such a good job of keeping it relevant and making sure that everything's updated. So it really is the bible for our industry. So thank you for doing that and thank you for taking the time to talk to us because it does mean a lot.

I appreciate you having me on. Ladies and gentlemen, i wish you the best of luck on your uh journey to becoming unicorn technicians all right. Thank you. So much jason, all right! You.