Home Schooling Early Years ICT, part 3: Creating a document.

This lesson was my first foray into the use of software. But rather than looking at the different applications and how they should be used, I decided to focus on the mechanics of using them by getting DD2 to work on a project.

Lesson 3: Creating a document

Objectives:

·      Use a standard word processor to create a document (use Google Docs, and the images taken during last lesson, to create a treasure hunt)

1.     Structure the document with a title, a beginning (the instructions), a middle (where the pictures are going to go), and an end (what to do to finish)

2.     Publish the document to the iPad, print on the printer

3.     Challenge Mummy to complete the treasure hunt

We struggled to complete this lesson plan because Google docs turned out to be extremely unwieldy to insert photos. It requires you to upload photos before they can be manipulated, which always takes longer than you want, no matter how fast the broadband connection. I found myself completing some of the mouse-work for DD2, as the lesser of two evils (the other being causing her frustration because we were running into our hard stop for the lesson).

Google Docs also didn’t play nicely with the printer, and I wasn’t able to troubleshoot it quickly, so didn’t bother. Instead, I used its sync with Google Drive to “publish” to my iPad, which enabled DD2 to show off her work. I’m finding that DD2 finds being able to display her work to Mummy to be an important validation of her work.

DD2 injected some unexpected creativity into the exercise too. She decided to insert a quotation into the introduction from one of her favourite picture books. It was entirely appropriate, and really added to the document. And was completely her idea – well done.

More in this series: part 2, part 4.