Karen, my wonderfully talented wife, is hard at work to compile my earlier efforts into an ebook. Coming soon, eight units of lesson plans for unplugged keyboarding. PreKeys: Preparing Young Students for Home Row Keyboarding.

Piano Keyboarding

This year I'm returning to my first love - piano keyboarding! I have taken on 20 piano students, this summer, and will try to schedule more as the school year resumes. My original intent, when I began writing PreKeys computer keyboarding lessons, was to apply the principles of piano pedagogy to direct instruction for computer literacy.
"My turn, watch me. Questions? Your turn, I'll watch."
That format includes both modeling, praise and correction, personalized for each student. 

Most of my piano students, young and old alike, seem to prefer the right hand over the left hand, since much of our culture favors and encourages right handedness. However, we are taught to read and write from left to right. I, therefore, encourage each piano student to practice the left hand double the amount of time that the right hand plays each song. I definitely introduce the notes for each new song with hands playing separately, then together. 

There are several techniques in common between the piano and the computer keyboards. With both we encourage our students to sit up with backs straight, feet flat on the floor, and fingers curved. We encourage them to develop peripheral vision while keeping their eyes on the copy, not on their fingers. We encourage constant rhythm as they develop speed and accuracy.

However, most beginning computer students are taught in a room full of students with similar age and ability levels. The ratio of students to teacher is often as high as 25 to 1. The modeling comes from animated computer graphics, not from an actual teacher or tutor. 

I will continue to post new ideas on this blog, and also invite your comments.

Dr. Bill Morgan, Ph.D.

Salt Palace Presentation

My wife and I were driving around Salt Lake City, last evening, looking at the lights en route to attending the Nutcracker ballet. As we drove past the Salt Palace, we both recalled how, twenty years ago, I gave a Utah Council for Computers in Education conference presentation called, "One Computer for 64 eyeballs. Using the LCD to Magnify Your Computer." Little did I know, at the time (I had written a grant to purchase and use a monochrome LCD plate connected to my Apple IIgs computer to use in my sixth grade class in Davis County), how very cutting edge that presentation was! So much has happened in since then. SmartBoards with ceiling mounted projectors have become cutting edge in many classrooms. In fact, I have been a sales representative for mimio interactive whiteboards in the midwest, during the past decade.

Yesterday, in a Granite School District classroom, in Salt Lake City, I was given the password to a computer that was connected to the ceiling mounted projector. I was in heaven, even though it was the day before Winter break and the kids were wild. I started out by projecting the powerpoint of the Periodic Table, which I had been working on at home but had never shown to an audience. I let it play automatically as I gave the textbook Reading assignment on reading Science applications. After the kids began to recognize Elements such as "Gold" and "Silver" and ask questions about the vocabulary, I strayed from the assigned activity and had the students "repeat after me" as we chanted the 118 names of the Elements. They understood that these vocabulary words would be useful to them in Chemistry classes down the road.

My fascination with the Periodic Table actually spawned while playing a computer game called Dr. Brain. A computer graphic character that looked like a mouse dressed as a Professor pronounced the names of the Elements while the game player clicked on the one letter or two letter symbols for the elements.

Back to the pre-Holiday classroom ... I projected and edited before their eyes, the story of Rindercella, which I also had stored on my jump drive. They were instructed to copy the text with their "best handwriting" knowing, however, that if they all had access to keyboards they would be typing or keying the text. The advantage to word processing is that we can go beyond keyboarding for speed and accuracy as we teach editing and revising skills. I would like to survey the schools to find out how many software packages in use today are encouraging students to learn from their mistakes. How many go beyond the Daily Oral Language activities of marking errors and actually allow students to revise and reprint their work after peer editing.

Fourth Graders

I was in a fourth grade classroom with five computers on the side wall. The students were able to log in with a generic password. After they did, I looked for MS Office Suite on each computer. Four of the five had 2007 and one had 2010. But, the students were not using the MS Software! This took me back ten years to when I first started showing teachers what they already had on their computers. Echoes of "I'm not sure that we have PowerPoint ..." came to me from Illinois, where I first started consulting.

So, I opened up the PowerPoint template on one of the computers and selected a color template. As I called roll I invited each of the students to come up and type in their first name. As I watched, not one of the students used the Caps Lock or Shift keys to make the first letter in their name a capital (upper case). Every one of them used one finger of one hand to type their name. Not one of them pressed the space bar or pressed the Enter key, which would have automatically changed the first letter of their name to a capital.

The MS Office Suite came preinstalled on many or most of these classroom computers, yet so many teachers are not using them to their full capacity to reinforce Common Core Curriculum in their classrooms. I really need to get the word out.

Charter School

This week I made my debut in the Charter Schools of Utah Valley. It was refreshing to interact with students whose parents are particularly invested in their students' education. It was also good to be in a fifth grade classroom where I could project my laptop through the overhead projector.

So, I taught the words to the PreKeys Sing Along With QWERTY songs by playing the music and showing the words to the songs simultaneously. It was rewarding to me to share "Pinkey Pokey" and "The Back Space Tango" along with the other half dozen songs. I took the opportunity to share these "sponge activities"' at the transitions between curriculum lessons and recess.

I also snuck in a PreKeys PreTest to see how much the students had learned from their school wide keyboarding lessons, which they said had all completed. Only two of the students was able to fill in the numbers and keys with 100% accuracy on the second round. None of them had the first round.

Third Grade Math

This week I found myself in a third grade classroom, teaching a lesson on place value. In the math manipulatives box I found place value dice, with two sets of four dice: a die for the one's place, a die for the ten's place, a die for the hundred's place, and a die for the thousand's. place.

First, I rolled out the six feet wide table top PreKeys mat, then I invited two students to come over to the table. I showed each how to roll the dice, then line them up in place value order. Then, I invited them to poke or slap the shapes on the number row of the keyboard that matched the numbers on the dice. The most interesting part was when they forgot to poke the zero; for instance, one student rolled the dice for 2056 but only poked the 2, the 5 and the 6. I had to remind the student to poke the 2, the 0, the 5 and the 6.

Using the class roll I then called the next two students over to the table. The first two students were instructed to show the next two students how to roll the dice, line them up in place value order and then poke the numbers that match the numbers on the dice. We continued this activity until every student had an opportunity to participate.

For several weeks I have been volunteering on Book Night at The Road Home homeless shelter in Midvale. The lead volunteer brings in other volunteers to read stacks of library books with students whose families are in temporary housing. I consider it to be "Literacy Night" and bring my Computer Literacy materials to share with the kids.

First, I rolled out the 8 feet wide keyboard on the floor, and invited the students to sit on it while I read a book to them. It was fun to see how irresistibly they slapped or stamped on the lily pad letters. Then, I asked the younger students to locate and trace letters or numbers. With the older students, I invited them to touch the letters to spell their names and other vocabulary words as I guessed them.

Last evening I took it to the next level by putting the smaller (6 feet wide) keyboard with color coded left and right hand letters and numbers. I then placed my laptop computer on the table, just beyond the vinyl keyboard, and displayed PowerPoint images to match the shapes on the keyboard. Students had a hard time waiting for their turn as I paired them up; the student on the left was instructed to use his or her left hand to poke the letters that matched those on the screen. The student on the right was instructed to use his or her right hand to poke the letters and numbers on the right side. I was thrilled to see their enthusiasm levels with the product that I have developed.

Next week I plan to introduce the grade leveled Dolch vocabulary words, starting with the one letter words "a" and "I" followed by two-letter words, three letter words, and so on. I hope to instill a love for reading and computer literacy with these students whose families are economically disadvantaged.