Computer How To's

At the beginning of the last school year, I set professional and personal goals for my classroom. We were required to do this by our principal, and really, its not a new idea. I think, though, that this is the first time I have really put thought into what I've included in those goals and tried to really model my instruction for these goals.
One of the goals was to increase the independence of my students in the use of technology. I know that my students benefit from using technology, but surely some of that benefit is diluted if I'm setting them up on the computer. One of the other goals that I had for last year (which is going to carry over this year, and I'll post about later) was to improve written communication in my students.
The result of this was a set of 'computer how-to' sheets that lived in bright yellow paper folders next to the computers in the classroom. We had some mild success with them; of course, my students with learning disabilities picked up on using the cues a lot faster than my students with other disabilities. I think that some of that success issue is that with many of my students, they are just not used to having to look at something to get help instead of sitting there with a confused look and waiting for me to notice. We'll be using the how-to sheets again this year...

You can see the various Computer How-To sheets here on the ITCFusion Wiki.