Barron Early Childhood Center

Have you ever seen a 4-year-old connect the components of a computer, turn it on, and begin installing software?

It all happened at Barron Early Childhood as students and their families participated in the Computers@Home program on 3 different evenings in January and February. Through the program, computers were placed with 35 families. However the reach of this program is much greater than that, because there are a total of 90 children in these families….90 children who now have a computer at home to help them develop reading skills, math skills, language arts skills, and technology skills.

During the training, the students and parents learned to connect all the components of their computers. A Power Point presentation was used as the trainers walked the families through the process step-by-step. The cables and ports were color-coded so they would be able to connect them again when they took their computers home.

After the computers were connected, the families were trained on Star Office--Text Document, which is the word processor installed on the computers. Training was given in selecting a font and formatting the font size and color. Instruction was given in saving the text document to the hard drive and to a floppy disk. The training also covered instructions for converting the Star Office document to a MS Word Document and saving to a floppy so the student could take the disk to school and open it in MS Word.

Return to the school projects page