Introducing the Logging-On Procedure to Kindergarten Students

This year are school went to a policy of all K-12 students having their own, individual computer accounts. In the past K-5 students had a generic classroom account that all students in a particular classroom used. This year every student has their own unique user name and password.

The user names are built using the last 2 digits of their graduation year, the first initial of their first name, and their full last name. Learning this, finding the letters on the keyboard, and so on is difficult for Kindergarten students who are still unsure of the difference between letters and numbers, let alone how to spell their name and how to find the letters on the keyboards.

To introduce this to the Kindergarten students, the lab assistants in each building and I followed the plan below.

• We made "laptop" computers using file folders.
• On the screens for these laptops, we put in each students user name.
• We have the keyboards in our labs "coded" with stickers to help with the logging on fingering. There are star stickers below the Ctrl and Alt keys and a smiley face sticker below the Delete key. We also have a pencil (for the eraser's sake) sticker pointing to the Backspace key. We used the same stickers on our paper keyboards before copying them so that they would match.
• We have found that the Kindergarten students sometimes have a hard time learning which button to click on the mouse, so on our paper mice we put an X on the left clicker before copying them.

• We went into each classroom with a keyboard, marked with the correct stickers, and a paper "laptop" for each student.
• We taught the students how to log on and had them practice with the paper "laptops."
• We left the laptops in the classroom for further practice.

• The letters on the keyboard are capital letters, but what you see on the screen when typing are lower case letters.
• We found that it was less confusing for the students if we gave them a card with their user name all in capital letters to refer to when typing. Even though when they check the screen for comfirmation they see lower case letters, that didn't seem to bother them. When we gave them their user name on a card in all lower case letters, it was more difficult for them to find the letters on the keyboard.
• Teachers suggested in their weekly newsletters for parents to help the kids practice using their home computer keyboards.
• We let the kids take their paper laptops home after we felt they had used them for practicing enough at school.

Click on the links below for copies of the templates we used.

Monitor

Keyboard

Mouse

Assembly Directions