HAMPTON, Virginia—Playing with words is an important step on the road to literacy. For young children from a poor urban neighborhood, basic computer commands recently offered a new and exciting way to play with the letters that make up their own names.
Cynthia Maciog, media specialist at Robert R. Moton Elementary, knew that most first-graders had no prior experience with keyboarding or word-processing software. Many local families can't afford telephone service; some are homeless. In a city where poverty is pervasive, Moton is the poorest school.
As an introduction to computers, Maciog designed easy-to-follow keyboarding directions that resulted in on-screen effects the children found "magical." First, students entered their names on the computer, then learned to use copy-and-paste commands to turn that one name into four names.
"Then I asked if students would like to see more magic," Maciog relates. "They did!" She showed them how to highlight text and enlarge the point size. They made three blocks of text of increasing size—28 point, 36 point, and 48 point—with each block in a different style (boldface, italics, or underlined).
