What's in the Technology Foundations Unit

Technology Foundations is the Typing.com unit on using a computer: files and folders, browsers and searching, email, working in the cloud, accessibility, hardware and troubleshooting. This article says where it sits, how big it is at each grade, and what a student does in a lesson.

Technology Foundations requires PLUS, and carries a gold crown in the curriculum rail to say so. It is in the Beyond Typing group of every grade-level curriculum, Kindergarten through 12th Grade and Adult Learner. At the head of the lesson list an overview card describes the unit and carries a thumbnail that opens its film, which is on YouTube as Technology Foundations.

The unit runs to 4 sections at every grade and grows with them: 16 lessons at Kindergarten through 2nd Grade, 26 at 3rd through 5th, 27 at 6th through 8th, and 30 at 9th through 12th Grade and Adult Learner.

The sections are named for the grade band.

• Kindergarten through 2nd Grade - Getting Started, Using School Tech Safely, Creating, Saving & Sharing, Wrapping Up

• 3rd through 5th Grade - Files, Search & Messages, Working with Tools & Others, Devices, Troubleshooting & Organization, Wrapping Up

• 6th through 8th Grade - Core Digital Workflows, Systems & Access, Security & Troubleshooting, Wrapping Up

• 9th through 12th Grade and Adult Learner - Modern Workflows & Infrastructure, Collaboration, Support & Portfolio Skills, Inclusive, Career-Ready Systems Thinking, Wrapping Up

Inside a section the unit works through one topic at a time. The nine topics at 5th Grade are File Management Practice, Browser Skills & Effective Search, Email & Digital Messaging, Cloud Storage & Collaboration, Accessibility Features, Basic Troubleshooting, Hardware Awareness, Digital Organization Systems, and a closing Unit Review.

At Kindergarten the same unit covers Meet Your Device, Logging In Safely, Using a Browser, Saving Your Work, Printing & Sharing, and a closing Tech Skills Showcase (Review).

Most topics are three lessons named after the topic: an Introduction, an Activity and a Reflection. A few topics carry only the first two, which is why nine topics come to 26 lessons at 5th Grade rather than 27.

• The Introduction presents the topic. Most open on a short film with a passage to read beneath it, and end on Read Transcript, which puts the words in a window of their own, and Begin Quiz, which opens a set of multiple-choice questions.

• The Activity puts the topic into practice. Some sort illustrated cards into labeled bins, some drop the student into a scenario to type through and choose how it continues, and some are a typing screen on the topic. Accessibility Features: Activity, for instance, is a typing screen worked on the on-screen keyboard.

• The Reflection is a short typing screen on what the topic came down to.

Technology Foundations has its own box on the Lessons tab of Class Settings, so you can switch the whole unit off for a class, or expand it and switch off lessons one at a time. Hide Specific Content and Lessons has the steps.

Typing.com sets the unit out lesson by lesson, grade by grade, with the standards it is aligned to, on the Technology Foundations curriculum page. In the Teacher Portal, Curriculum in the left-hand menu opens the same lessons for the curriculum a class is on.