{"id":8132,"date":"2019-10-21T11:56:14","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T18:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=8132"},"modified":"2020-07-16T22:23:35","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T05:23:35","slug":"keyboard-and-mouse-blocking-software-for-your-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2019\/10\/21\/keyboard-and-mouse-blocking-software-for-your-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyboard and Mouse Blocking Software for Your Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

The problem<\/strong>: In some of the classrooms I work in, students sometimes interrupt computer presentations on the teacher’s computer by randomly hitting the the keyboard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The solution<\/strong>: A free Windows software utility. With it, the keyboard and mouse can be easily locked and unlocked with a special key combination, for example: Ctrl-Alt-F. This makes their computer immune to “fly-by” keyboard tapping. When the behavior doesn’t get the frustrated attention it used to, it is quickly extinguished.<\/p>\n

You can find the software here: BlueLife KeyFreeze v1.4<\/a><\/p>\n

Just in case, here is a local copy of the Bluelife KeyFreeze 1.4.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I tried several other keyboard & mouse lockers and this one was clearly the best. KeyFreeze is free software. It works great “out of the box” but you may want to change a few options from the icon on the system tray. I turned off the cute lock\/unlock music and customized it a little.<\/p>\n

Installing it takes a couple steps (I’m not complaining, it’s totally free software!), I’ll walk you through it.<\/p>\n

1 – Download and unzip BlueLife \u00a0KeyFreeze<\/p>\n

2 – It doesn’t run an installation program, it just runs when you double-click on it. It’s not good practice to run the program from my “Downloads” folder so I copied all the files to a new folder named C:\\Programs\\Keyfreeze<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 – You should make it start automatically when Windows starts. Here’s how to do that: Go to the C:\\Programs\\Keyfreeze<\/strong> folder and create a shortcut to KeyFreeze_x64.exe<\/strong> by right-clicking on it. Hit Win+R. Type “shell:startup” to open up the Windows startup folder. Drag the shortcut you just made into that folder. Done<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

Now, when you want to freeze the keyboard and mouse, just hit Ctrl-Alt-F. To unfreeze, do it again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For difficult classroom situations, you might want to disable the touch-screen<\/strong> and the “turn computer off when closing the lid<\/strong>” features. Here’s how:<\/p>\n

– On my computer, to disable the touch-screen I hit the Windows key, type “Device manager”, find “Human Interface Devices”, find the “HID Compliant touch screen”, click the “driver” tab, click “Disable Device”. You can re-enable the touch screen by coming back to this page and clicking “Enable Device”<\/p>\n

– To disable the “Turn off the computer when closing the lid” feature, hit the Windows key, type “change what closing the lid does”, change “When I close the lid” to “Do nothing”.<\/p>\n

I’d love to hear in the comments if this software was useful in your classroom!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem: In some of the classrooms I work in, students sometimes interrupt computer presentations on the teacher’s computer by randomly hitting the the keyboard. The solution: A free Windows software utility. With it, the keyboard and mouse can be easily locked and unlocked with a special key combination, for example: Ctrl-Alt-F. This makes their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-occupational-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}