Last week as I was helping a child in my class with some data entry using the excellent Create-a-Graph, I watched as a child sitting next to them learned something new. I was simply using the TAB keyboard short-cut to move between fields when adding some data. I could see that the boy next to me had looked up from the work on his own laptop. I continued supporting this child and I again noticed their neighbour peering around my arm trying to spot which key I was using to move between fields. He then looked back at his own keyboard and found the TAB key, he navigated to his own data on his own graph and began trying his newly found keyboard short-cut.
As I finished up with the child I was originally helping and moved away, I could not help but notice a big grin had spread across the boy’s face as he put into action what he just discovered for himself. I have to say it also made me smile. It is pretty amazing witnessing someone discover something for themselves and benefit from using it.
Amazing how our “ah-ha” moments in teaching have changed! No doubt, the child you mentioned will use that skill for the rest of his life. What a moment. 🙂
It is the little things that get you the most! I wouldn’t underate the effectivness of students knowing their shortcuts either. It empowers them as computer users.
There are so many things in the tech world teachers do have to show students (rather than only the other way around). I had similar moments last week when my students were amazed, searching Google news, that the web showed articles written as recently as ONE MINUTE ago! How do they do that? they asked. I demonstrated how I update my blog, and the instantaneous posting to the web and they were wow’d. It is exactly like myspace, etc, but they still hadn’t made the connection.