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Virtual School. Information Technology. Lesson 1 & 2. Teachers' notes |
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Teacher / parent notes IT in context |
Skills These word processing skills are fundamental. Many people who seem to be competent computer users lack some of the basic skills or have worked out an alternative way of working. This is usually because they are self taught and have not been shown methodically how to perform the basic skills. Typical errors include using the space bar to move text, where a tab key or centering format would be better. This will cause chaos when transferring text to another application and must be avoided. You can check for the existence of unnecessary spaces by changing the margins of the text and noting how the line lengths change, leaving odd spaces where the space bar was used. The skills described in lesson 1 and rehearsed in subsequent lessons are common to virtually all word processing programs. Increasingly common is the "drag and drop" style of moving text, where the text to be moved is selected and with the mouse button held down the text is dragged to a new insertion point. This is very simple but not yet so common that it has superceded the traditional "copy and paste". You may wish to emphasise the point that editing digital text is usually much easier than starting afresh every time, as was necessary with old fashioned pre-digital typewriters. Editing saves time and produces a clean print every time with no visible amendments. Lesson 2 uses Find or Search and Replace. This again saves time, but it is open to error and abuse. A pupil can copy someone else's work and change it by altering key words or phrases either selectively or universally. A common error is to mis-spell a word in the replace box, which is then duplicated throughout the text. Of course the error can then be rectified by using find and replace again, but with more care this time.
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