Mouse, touch and keys
Computer Science · Early Years · The School
Pointing and clicking
The mouse moves a little arrow called the pointer. Your finger does the same on a screen. Move the pointer slowly onto a picture. Then press once. That is a click. Now press, hold and slide. That is a drag. Practise clicking on things. Practise dragging them around. Your hand is learning to talk to the computer.
The letter board
A keyboard is a board of letter buttons. But they are NOT in alphabet order! Find the letters of your name, one by one. The big long key at the bottom is the space bar. It makes the gap between words. Typing your own name is your first real computer skill.
Computers follow orders
Here is the big secret. Computers are not clever. They only ever do what a person tells them. Click here. Type this. Open that. People are the clever ones. The computer just follows the orders very, very fast. Remember this and you are the boss of the computer. Never the other way round.
Open a drawing program. Try to draw a line by clicking once at each end. Do not hold the button down. Nothing happens, or you get two dots. The computer did exactly what you did. Nobody ever told it to join them up. Now press and HOLD while you move. Release at the end. A line! The computer did not learn anything. You gave it a different instruction.