Not Computer Savvy….

When Loran and I went to Ella’s first Kindergarten conference, we were informed that some of her lowest marks were in her fluency with the computer. She’s come a long way since the beginning of the year, but it was pretty iffy at the beginning. The keyboard was a foreign concept to her and using the mouse? Forget about it. Every morning, before school she goes to the computer lab to work on a program designed to boost literacy, it’s amazing. However, quite often, they’d notice Ella just sitting in front of the computer quietly, and they’d realize, “Ella logged herself off again…” Clearly, it was time to make the technology jump.

You would think that given her parents, Loran – Mr. A/V in middle and high school and myself, who used to go to work with my dad on the weekends and assemble/fix computers, Ella and Lily would have Intel Inside…*insert Intel jingle*. Instead, I went the low-tech route with them. Sure, they got screen time in the form on tv, and sometimes I let them fumble around on my iPad, but I figured that they’d get plenty of screen time come school, so I didn’t make it a priority in their early childhood. Instead, I focused my efforts in building their imagination…crazy huh?

But the time has come where the girl needs to know how to wield a mouse and navigate the highly secured, locked down, kid-version of the Internet. Turns out, we were in the process of updating our home A/V system (see, we’re techy nerds), so we had an available computer to put towards the effort. Loran made a stop at Goodwill’s electronic store and came home with a corded keyboard and mouse (weird, cords) and a flat screen monitor.

Now Ella is connected…in as much as she can log-in to a program she uses at school to boost her literacy and PBS Kids. As for now, only Loran and I know Ella and Lily’s email addresses that we set them up with before birth, so she’s really not accessible, and won’t be for years.

The computer focused Goodwill has a computer museum that is actually quite interesting, but also features some old-school games. I introduced the girls to Mario Bros…on NES. Turns out, Lily is a pretty natural Luigi and took it up easily. Check out that laser focus. That girl could be a gamer.