Experiences from the 70's - teaching scouts

Hello all,

I used to live in Cambridge (UK) for a few years and I was mainly active on VHF. At the time I was a member of the Cambridge & District Amateur Radio Club.

At one of the meetings I was asked if I could teach a group of scouts how to solder. So I got a box of resistors, capacitors and a few other components, then borrowed a load of soldering irons from work (PYE Telecom). A room was organized for me and about a dozen kids sat down to learn a new skill. Unfortunately it was not a success. The kids were not really interested, they only wanted to play around and carve their names in the table-tops with the soldering irons. A couple of the boys did make a few lewd shapes with the resistors, but at least they did solder something.

About 6 months later I was asked to repeat the exercise and their scout master tried to give the boys a lecture on participation. I tried a much different approach.

When the lads sat down, there were paper aeroplanes, and loads of loud chatter. But the rowdy ones sat at the back of the room, just as they did the time before. I just stood there at the front for a few minutes with a cassette recorder / radio and didn't say much, at first. After a few minutes I re-wound the tape and played it back with a high volume. You could hear the general babble, but you could hear quite clearly the two main rowdy kids over the top of all the chatter. I caught every word just those two boys said, and it was some embarrassment to them

I had built a couple of FM wireless microphones and hidden it under the tables. That was how I recorded them. Suddenly there was silence. I retrieved my FM microphones and all the lads became interested in this new toy. They all wanted one for themselves so that they could do a bit of mischief, or something, so I had captured their interest. The kids had to solder to build the project, and they all did a fantastic job of soldering the components on the little PCB's. If I remember rightly there were a couple of dry joints but only one lad had wired the transistor the wrong way round. All the other worked worked well.

This time the training session was a complete success. I learned that if you are going to teach something you have to get the interest of the participants, especially children.

The session was repeated a couple of times including a group of girl-guides. I found that the boys all wanted to rush the job to get the toy finished, but the girls generally followed the instruction, especially the coil-winding. Some of the boys projects worked but outside the FM band, but when the coils were re-shaped they were all good. The girls, on the other hand, made some beautifully formed coils and every one of them was within the 88MHz to 108MHz band. This was the birth of my FM wireless microphone "bug" projects that you can find on my homepages.

Since then I have done a lot of teaching for adults, and created a few projects for older children. I must admit that I really love teaching.

Some of the things I have done more recently was to give the grandchildren an "anonymous" mobile telephone with a cash-card, a bottle of helium and some party balloons. The girls inflated balloons and tied notes on the on the lines of "School-project. If you find this then please send a text message to 073 XXX XXXX and tell us where you found it. I do not remember how many they sent, but the first reply was from Nynäshamn on the Swedish east coast. A distance of probably 200km.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from a Swedish guy who asked me if I could create some communications projects for children. I think that could be fun for me and some of the younger members of society. You never know, it could stimulate an interest in ham-radio?

So I am thinking about adding a new section to my homepages; "Kids Corner". I already have about 5 ideas that I can put together in my lunch breaks that can be used to have 2-way conversation over a distance, using really simple components. The first is likely to be all paper and string, as Erik B suggested, targeted to kids about age 6 or 7 years upwards. I once used a plastic hose to communicate through a "sump" where the cave roof went below the water level and you had to dive 3 meters to get to the other side. Perhaps this speaking-tube would make an interesting project?

Perhaps projects like this could also attract a bit more attention to HHH and this forum? Then we could all see some benefits.

If anyone has any ideas for suitable project ideas then please post them. If anyone also has any funny or interesting teaching stories then I would be really interested to hear about them. I have learned a lot by teaching and it seems that with a live audience I always get comments and ideas that I had never though about.

Very best regards from Harry - SM0VPO