Gang:
After two mornings of teaching a total of three 50min classes, I can say that a presentation based around AMSAT activities (and Echo specifically) works very well at the 6th grade level. However, the students were already engaged in a science curriculum regarding basic aeronautics, astronomy and planets, and they were about to discuss satellites to a greater or lesser degree in the coming weeks.
After an introduction to the idea of a satellite and their uses, the bulk of my presentation centered around the design, building and journey to launch of Echo. I'm afraid I pillaged Bill Greene's on-line photo archive. (Students always love the one of Echo strapped into its own seat aboard the plane to Kazakhstan.)
Then I prepped them to listen to a short QSO between myself and David EB4DEH, who kindly sent me a mp3 a year ago. For today's class I arranged with a local ham to have them do an satellite-style contact over a local repeater (giving callsign and gridsquare). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to alert him that the schedule had changed. Nevertheless, the students were interested by the repeater's response, and I could show that it was much like the equipment on-board Echo.
Finally, I talked about some Cubesat projects, including Genesat and the upcoming CanX-2, of special interested due to its Canadian origin. Surprisingly, to me at least, Cubesats seemed to resonate with them. (My daughter, who was in one of the classes, confirmed this impression by listening in to later conversations.) I think their simplicity appealed, as well as the fact that these were made by university students on a budget.
I'd say these presentations went well, even though we never listened to a satellite live. Something to consider if the technical challenges of doing a live demo seem to daunting. In effect, your experience and enthusiasm will carry the event. It should be said that I am a university professor and used to working in the classroom (though my teaching is in the Humanities). Nevertheless, this age group warms quickly to the guest speaker and is easily impressed by the cool stuff.
While the teachers involved thanked me profusely, I think I should pass on their gratitude to the AMSAT community for providing such an engaging basis for education. And to think that they never even spoke over the bird!
I have some recommendations for AMSAT based on this experience. First, a more extensive set of free-to-use educational diagrams would be very useful and, I think, an excellent recruitment tool. They would probably find their way onto Wikipedia and other places, with a reference to AMSAT. There may be more than I think already available: the AMSAT website was briefly and uncharacteristically unavailable when I was working on the presentation on Sunday night.
More ambitiously, I think we should consider establishing the infrastructure for a network of Middle or High Schools clubs or classrooms who are affiliated with the cubesat and APRS satellite initiatives and have stations that feed them data.
What sort of infrastructure? There's two important components I can think of. To my mind what matters here from the school's and students' perspectives is kudos, recognition from a larger group. If this is so, CalPoly or some other institution could produce some certificates recognizing Ms. Smith's class in Podunk Hollow, NB as a "Member of the International Satellite Collective" or what-have-you. Make a website, and list the participating schools for each year. Ms. Smith feels (rightly, mind you) that she's done something to make her class part of the larger world, and her school administration has something to brag about, too. Participation would be determined by submitting telemetry, simple as that.
If the CAPE people are thinking of engaging local schools, they might consider how much little greater effort it would take to globalize the effort, seeding cubesat stations around the world. Bob's Navy lab would also be a great place for this.
The other component of such a job would be to streamline and automate the collection and dissemination of telemetry. I'm working on a Jabber project that does this; stay tuned for more.
73, Bruce VE9QRP