Often, I get requests from hams teaching courses to print a number of copies of my No-Nonsense Technician Class Amateur Radio License Study Guide. I normally reply that individuals are free to download and print the study guide if they like, but that I don’t usually give permission to print out many copies. There are a couple of reasons for this, the main one being that when individuals each download their own copies, I get a better indication of how many are actually using it.
Sometimes, they’ll come back and say that the reason they’re asking for permission to print copies is that some of the students aren’t very Internet-savvy, and that they may not know how to get on my website and download the study guide. That, of course, begs the question, “Should amateur radio operators know how to use the Internet?”
The NCVEC question pool committee obviously thinks so. There are a number of questions on the test about IRLP and EchoLink, both of which use the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to allow communications over the Internet.
Don’t get me wrong. I love it that folks want to use my study guide, and I will continue to make it free for as long as I continue to produce it. It seems to me, however, that knowing how to use the Internet is now a basic skill that every ham should have. That being the case, I’m going to continue to ask that teachers that want to use my study have their students download it from my website and not print copies for them.