Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Register Today for January's Parent #TechTuesday Sessions



The DLC team is again offering Parent #TechTuesday sessions at 2:15PM - 2:45PM focused on upskilling parents in the use of digital tools. The January sessions will focus on specific questions for you, the parents. The three sessions will be run in a Q&A format. Please submit the question(s) you have HERE so we can prepare to serve you when you attend. We ask that you bring a device if you have one so you can click along during our sessions. Laptops, tablets or phones will be handy.  The sessions will be in the DLC office on campus.

Please REGISTER for an event on the events calendar on the right side of our ET blog. When you click on the event title, you will then click the red "register" button.

The DLC Team hopes to see you a session!

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Tips For Keyboarding at Home

Good keyboarding skills are essential if we are going to use our computers effectively and efficiently. The most important thing with keyboarding is realizing that good keyboarding is based on neurological patterning ... we groove this into our brain.  To do this well it is essential that we type with our fingers on the home keys in a consistent manner.


Home Keys:
Learning to base our hands on the home keys will help us become very fast, efficient typists.  We can find the home keys by the raised dot or bumpy lines on the F and J keys.  Index fingers rest there and other fingers rest beside them in a straight line.  Thumbs rest on the space bar.  Imagine your fingers are glued to these keys and that one finger at a time can stretch up or down to other keys, but immediately springs back to its home once it has typed the letter.




Wrist Position
It is really important not to rest your wrists on the computer or the table as you will build an incorrect neurological pattern and a bad habit.  This could cause problems if keyboarding a lot later in life, as you will be putting ongoing pressure on the medial nerve in your rests and could cause repetitive strain injuries.  Aim for a straight line across your forearm into your hand as in the third picture below.



Seating
It is difficult to have a good wrist position if you are not seated at the correct height table and chair.  Ideally your feet should be flat on the floor and your shoulders relaxed, allowing your forearms and wrists to come straight over the keyboard.  


How Do I Know If I am Doing Ok?
Typing is a balance between speed and accuracy.  Accuracy is the most important.  You are aiming to keep you accuracy percentage between 90 and 95%.  If it's higher than 95%, focus more on improving your speed.  If it's lower than 90%, slow and down and focus on your accuracy.  Speed will come if you stay consistent on home keys and accuracy.

If you are using keyboarding online, we have preset the accuracy for you and allowed quite a slow speed, so just focus on home keys and being as accurate and consistent as possible.  Try and keep a steady rhythm.

Have fun!




Is the Internet making us small minded?




A very interesting article from the BBC website.

Quotes from the article 

"We live in a world of curation. The internet — aided by algorithms that predict what we search, buy, listen to, read, watch and even who we want to date and marry — expertly helps to us find what we want."

"Rather than taking us out of our comfort zone, the digital revolution is enabling each of us to live happily in our own worlds, and in the process closing down opportunities for originality, spontaneity and learning."

Full article


  • By Sydney Finkelstein 

Monday, December 12, 2016

Teach fractiosn right from you Chrome browser


   Chrome extension available in the Chrome store  (free)




Be in to win! What would you like to see at a #TechTuesday/#WiredWednesday in 2017?

Seoul Foreign School Teachers...



Please click on the link to fill out the Google Form below with some topics you'd like to see covered at an upcoming #TechTuesday/#WiredWednesday Session!

Google Form Link

Fill in the form to go into the draw for an iTunes gift card.






Thursday, December 8, 2016

Parents and Digital Media

"Nine hours and 22 minutes is the average time parents spend with screen media daily, including for personal and work use. 7:43 of that time is devoted to personal screen media ..."

Common sense media just released (December , 2016) their latest research on parents and digital media.  It highlights parent personal use, thoughts and concerns about their children's use and provides some fascinating reading.  For a more indepth look at their report, you can go here or to their website.





Design your own games

Students...Want to design your own games?   Gamestar Mechanic

https://gamestarmechanic.com/

Using STEM to break Hot Wheels loop record