We need to come to some list of say up to 10 skills or types of programs our kids can have access to through the internet and computers and find ways to allow it without all the filtering by the district. Many of the kids are starting to use this stuff at home, and probably with varying skill levels. Many kids have lots of little clever things they have learned to do such as make pictures and then post them to the desktop but at the same time they are lacking a consistent set of realistic and reasonable skills. For instance, they don't understand the word processor program to a middle school level of competency. They are not familiar with flash drives and how to use them.
A paraprofessional brought a seventh-grader into the library during lunch today, and said that the boy was making a website at home with his uncle. The boy didn't seem to know where to go to get to the website which might not be hosted at this point. He wanted to show his content to us in notepad for some reason, and the district doesn't allow notepad to be utililzed. We are worried about kids writing programs and being hackers probably..
The paraprofessional helped him set up a blog on blogger( which the filters didn't him even though sometimes I get a message saying it isn't allowed in the district, and then I do another search and login to with sucess.) The only thing the kid was typing was a list of character names, maybe for Pokemon characters. There weren't really any sentences that I could detect. I am not sure if this kid is resource or if there are some special needs. I seriously doubt that much of his website is really being done by him rather than his uncle. The kids want to do this work, but we are not teaching them even the most basic of skills.
This is my suggested list.
They should have a flash drive and know how to save to it. The district doesn't allow saving anything to desktops. Some kids seem to know a way around that, I think.
Basic parts of the computer: the hard drive, the monitor, the keyboard, the printer. A lot of our students think turning off the monitor is turning off the computer.
Keyboarding: I know of only one teacher who has had students work with the free online games for keyboarding.
Open a free email account, send emails, save and delete mail and contacts.
Microsoft Office Word proficiency: Insert dates, select text, cut and paste, apply bold, italic, underline; spell check, bullets, lists, page alignments, do a simple table, save and send a document by email, print.
Microsoft Office Excel: Know about worksheets, columns, rows and cells, change the name of a worksheet, change the color tab of a sheet, make a list, sort alphabetically, be able to enter amounts of money, and generate a sum, and do simple pie and bar graphs.
Microsoft Publisher: Students should be able to do a simple newsletter, and design an event poster, be able to upload clip art into their documents.
PowerPoint or other slide show type program: They should be able to put together a short slide show, and include video clips if our filters allowed them to do it.
Blog: They should be able to start a blog, select a template, write some text, and upload some pictures and widgets if our filters allowed that.
Google docs: Our students need to be familiar with these documents and know how to share their work with their teachers or other students working on collaborative projects.
Google website or other free website program: The google website tools are not that easy, but they are not that hard either. Students could do a simple 4 to 5 page website on some topic.
Noodletools citation generation: Students should be able to use Noodletools to produce papers and generate a bibliography at least in the simplest format, share work with teachers.
Those are 12 skills I would like students to learn. I hear statements like we don't know what to teach them because we don't know what they're going to need. Technology changes, but if they learn these basics they will adapt to whatever comes along. As it is, they know a fair amount, but it isn't from a taught curriculum and its just bits and pieces. They don't need to be experts but they should have some knowledge, and I think why we don't do it is that it isn't tested by the State of California. I think by the end of eighth grade, they could know these skills, and know about cyber issues.
Great list, Pat. I like it.
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