Keystrokes to Literacy  - excerpted exercise ideas

When your students first sit down to a computer:

Present them with some immediately practical information
ie. moving the mouse, clicking, typing on the keyboard. 
How it works or terminology and jargon can come later!

Keep your hands off their computer. Let them be on their own a bit.

Give them a finished product, print their work so they can take with them when done.
Make it tangible!

Make a folder on the teacher computer or on a Master Floppy disk that contains all files that you will be using.  This way if a files gets messed up they can start over fresh.

Have your activities begin as documents that you offer to students on a floppy disk.

Open the folder containing the activities for them.

Have their first task be opening the document by double clicking it.

Possibly adjust double click speed to a slower rate if the user has trouble

            Do this by going to: Start / Settings /Control Panel / Mouse

then slide Double Click Speed toward SLOW.

OR convert to Single Click Everywhere Windows

For more info on this See http:sabes.org/technology/computerbasics

Dont confuse them at this “first magic” moment with arcane navigation of menus

this is too much at the beginning.

Before ending always remind the student to enter their name and date at the end of the document. This way the print out will have useful information for them later.

A good first investigation

Explore the difference between Delete and Backspace key.

First play with a page of text....let them not worry about messing up.

Then create a document with alpha and numeric data.

Have the student erase the numeric data.

example:

Hello my 23 name is Alice.

34 I live in 6 Dorchester.

Activity Two

                                    1

3                                  6

4                      2

8                                              7

Start with 1 and going up

Type the same number 1, 2, 3, etc. just to the left of the number already there.

Optional: type the word of the number: One Two etc.

Activity 3 Inserting text

Complete the each sentence like the one above it.

Dan is a man

D is a m

Alice is a woman

A is a wn

The ball is white

The b is we

Remember change mind set from “I did something wrong “to “why did this happen”

Using the Space bar

separate the words in the line

canfanrantan

billfillpill