I have never taught Kinders. I did do some small group with kinders about 8 years ago.
Friday I had 2 groups of k's in the computer lab for an hour each. Their EA stayed with the class. I hadn't completely decided what to do with them on their 3rd day of school until that morning.
I showed a book being read aloud, and went over rules briefly. Actually, just the most important rules. Then I talked about what is a computer and showed all of the different devices they will use at school, plus my phone. We talked about the purpose of the mouse and then I gave everyone a mouse (I found a tub of them in a cupboard. Don't know if they work or not.) and a piece of paper with lines for them to practice tracing with the mouse. Took them up when they started losing interest and sent them to sit in front of a computer. We play simon says (although I didn't say simon says...) while they pointed at the different parts of the computers. We did it slow, then faster, and then faster. Then I had them come back to our meeting area where we reviewed the parts again, and then did a drag and drop activity on my promo board with the parts of the computer.
This week they have to learn to log in. I think I will have parent helpers. Each student has a 9 digit number and a 9 digit password that is specific to them. I have made color-coded cards, and coded rows on each keyboard. I have a mouse practice game (more than one) that I will send to them when they get logged in.
Any tricks to ease the pain of that log in day? Games, activities that can be used to help with interest?
This won't help in the short term, but my district utilizes a program that makes logins for primary grades. I don't really know anything about it other than that it exists, as I teach m.s. I would look into that.
Short of getting a ton of adult or older student help, could you have each student use the same 1 ligin/password? Then you could label the keyboards with shapes and colors, make a game of it, etc.
Our kids use a math program with "9-digit" passwords - but they're pictures they click on, out of grouped choices. The program actually trains them, and it kind of amazes me how fast most of them pick it up.
That said, keep a list handy! It won't happen until a few classes in, and there's always one or two who struggle.
If your logins are purely random, maybe help them make up funny jingles to remember them/
I printed out copies of a keyboard to practice finding numbers and letters. Hopefully I will have some parents. If not, my plan will be do put many of them on an ipad while I help a couple log on. Get them logged on and started on an activity and move on.
It will take a while, but eventually, I assume they will learn to do it.
In my class of 12, 8 got logged in. I am good with that.
The other class with 20, and an EA helper, I didn't even put them on computers. Next week I will. My goal will be 16 of them log in.
I will log them all in myself prior to their class day. Not only do they have to log in, but they have extenstions to install and Chrome to make a default. I will do all that before they log in so I don't have to try talking them through that.
Otherwise, I have the rest of my classes all sitting pretty.
Yes, it will take a lot of time up front to login as each kid and load extensions but it will be worth it. I also made bookmarks bar visible and put my website link on it. Do you have access to a couple of Chromebooks? I would work on two side by side so that during wait time one one, I could work on the other. Chromebooks could be situated closer to each other than side by side computers.
My site had basic links on the home page plus buttons linked for each grade. Once to the K page (in particular), rather than word links, I had 4 big color buttons and I could change what they linked to for different weeks. I made sure not to use both red and green for buttons because it seemed like each year I had at least one colorblind student. You could also use animal pictures. Why didn't I think of that back then??
I need to go back and review the two sides to the invisible mouse button. I put stickers on one side, and they still don't get it.
I used a small smiley face sticker on the push button of the mouse as well. I noticed some K kids used their thumbs to push the mouse button. Usually those were the smaller kids. Some of them are just tiny!
There are some teeny tiny hands in these classes! I look twice at some of them, thinking they might be siblings whose parents have come to help. No, no parents, so they must be students!
I didn't see this post originally, but I got quite a few laughs out of it. I'm so impressed you got a whole class logged in! We work on logging in for WEEKS. Seriously, if that's all they learn in kinder I'm good with it.
Quote:
It will take a while, but eventually, I assume they will learn to do it.
This week they logged into computers (9 digit id's, 9 letter/number/symbol password) and into their classlink accounts. Eventually I want them into their google accounts, but I think I will take a break from learning to log in for a couple of weeks.
One more class to get into classlink, but I think we will make it on Monday.
Classlink, from as far as I can tell, is similar to Clever. I just have to get all the links into their classlink -- which I have to put through the tech dept.. Too much control in one place. They are getting there. I am actually quite pleased. My kinder teacher on Friday was totally surprised how well they did. She always logs into her classroom computers (which in itself causes problems) and decided that if they can do it in the lab, they can do it in class. We are going to try it with a class set of chromebooks this week during her lab time.
> 
08-19-2019, 05:43 AM
Hopefully I will have some parents. If not, my plan will be do put many of them on an ipad while I help a couple log on. Get them logged on and started on an activity and move on. 
