"Get Up and Go"

I am thrilled and very excited to begin the 2010-2011 school year at TAS and have been delightfully overwhelmed with the student population. The students have been fabulous at responding to questions, politely asking for assistance and are respectful of each other. I was amazed at how well the 5th grade students could keyboard...some 50WPM with 97% accuracy. Not something I have seen a great deal of at other schools I have worked in. The students have been correctly taught to love keyboarding!

We started the year with “Get Up and Go” a unit which discusses:

1. Proper handling and use of a Netbook which all students in grades 3-5 will be using this year
   
   
   
   • Carry the Netbook with 2 hands
   
   
   • Log off when done and passing it to another student
   
   
   • Shut down when putting it into the storage cart
   
   
   • Always plug in the power adapter so it can charge the battery
   
   
   • Use the machine on a table not their laps or arms
   
   
   • Do not force a machine to shut down, tells a teacher if it will not shut down properly
   
   
   
   


2. Login/Logoff procedures
   
   
   
   • User name, password
   
   
   • Password etiquette
   
   
   • Creating a new password
   
   
   • Wiggle the mouse to wake up the computer
   
   
   • Ctrl, Alt, Del
   
   
   • Logoff when done
   
   
   
   


3. File management
   
   
   
   • Create new folders
   
   
   • Rename
   
   
   • Delete
   
   
   • Access them from within an application
   
   
   
   


4. Navigating to different sites we will be working with this year
   
   
   
   • Blogs
   
   
   • GApps
   
   
   • Typing Pal
   
   
   • TAS home page
   
   
   
   


5. Keyboarding

We have a few more lessons to go in this unit but we are off to a great start. I am looking forward to helping the students be creative, collaborate on units, understand their digital footprints, connect globally to others, and become good digital citizens.