[PVRCNC] helping kid learn morse code

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

One of the 4th grade kids (a girl) at my son's elementary school is trying
to teach herself morse code and one of the teachers contacted me knowing
I'm a ham.

The kid has a toy straight key with a buzzer and some book which uses
words with the emphasis on syllables to remember whether it's a dash or a
dot in any symbol. Having tried this method myself and failed at about the
same age from a similarly "helpful" kid's book, I quickly disabused the
kid of on the effectiveness of this method and will go find some tapes for
her to listen to.

However I thought I'd see what the latest thinking on learning code is.

I assume people don't listen to cassette tapes any more. Are they learning
from CDs? mp3s? cell phones :-)

I remember back in the DOS days trying out programs where you had to type
the letter for the character you'd just heard before you could go on. I
found these hopeless, I couldn't type accurately and you couldn't follow
behind. Are there programs nowadays that work or is listening and writing
with a pen still the best?

Are there CDs of just copy which you can listen to rather than having a
program to "help" teach you?

I remember the tapes I had to listen to for my license exams were badly
recorded - because of AGC in the recording, the leading edge of each
dot/dash was much louder than the rest of the character. I found them hard
to listen to.

I remember reading about some method where the characters are sent at high
speed (eg 20wpm) when you're first learning at low speed (5wpm). Has
anyone figured out if this works yet?

If this kid gets interested, I'll point her in the direction of a Bencher
rather than a straight key.

Anything else I should know that's happened in learning morse code in the
last 20yrs that I should know about?

Thanks Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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