Reading Arts Day at the Lakehurst Elementary School

This past May 9^th the Holiday City Amateur Radio Club was asked to participate in Reading Arts day at the Lakehurst Elementary School. Your club president Larry Puccio K2QDY was contacted by the school and in turn I was asked by Larry to assist him. Just prior to the event I had come down with sore throat so Larry picked up the ball and ran with it with little assistance from me. He provided a schedule of tasks we would go through with each class. This would familiarize the students with a brief history of amateur radio and Morse code. We let them hear what Morse code sounded like along with some brief instruction in a few characters of the alphabet. We were amazed at how quickly they picked up on the code. We also introduced them to QSL cards and had each student locate the country of origin of each card. This was well accepted by the students as each enthusiastically wanted to be next in locating a country. Larry also challenged the class to a contest between Morse code and text messaging. In each contest Morse code beat out text messaging by a margin of about 3 to 1. Both the students and teachers were amazed at how much faster Morse code was than the more modern text messaging. You can read more about this event in the June 2008 club newsletter. As the last class of the day was leaving the classroom, one of the students from a previous class approached us with some letters. They were from some of the students telling us how much they had learned that day and that they were very interested in learning more about amateur radio and Morse code. I have attached the letters below for all to see. Both Larry and I came away feeling good about what we and the students had experienced that day. It was a great time for all.

Steve Jackson, N2WLH