Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

Most of my MS & HS students are progressing nicely through the keyboarding program we use at school – MicroType 3.0.  I usually begin class with a 5 minute typing warm-up before we begin the day’s lesson.  Some students even choose to practice their typing when they finish an assignment. 

Parents always ask me to recommend typing software so their child can practice more at home.  Today I asked my friends on Twitter to recommend some online tools and I received enough to keep those fingers busy. Thanks to suzievesper and brachsmith for their suggestions.

Typing Games 2 Help U – http://www.berkeleyprep.org/lower/llinks/typing%20games.htm
List of links to many more typing games

BBC Typing – Dance Mat Typing – http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/
An excellent site that students can work through the different levels to learn to touch type correctly (for ages 7 to 11). Probably all you will really need.

Sense – Touch Typing – http://sense-lang.org/typing/
A free online typing tutor with different lessons and clear diagrams to help you use the correct fingering.

Alpha Rain – http://www.powertyping.com/rain.shtml
Five levels of difficulty. Students have to hit keys on the keyboard before the letters fall to the bottom of the screen

Barracuda – http://www.powertyping.com/baracuda/baracuda.htm
Three different speeds – you need to type whole words and single capital letters.

Letters and Words – http://2addicted.com/letters
These two games are truly a challenge for kids who are pretty good at typing! There is a bit of strategy involved. I was a little saddened after a particularly good game to find I had only got 245th in the last 24 hours!!

Type Me – http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/games/game_type_me.html
A three leveled game (and each game can be set to a variety of difficulty levels). In the first level, children have to click on a letter to ‘save it’. When they type the letter correctly, the letter gets a parachute as it falls from the top of the screen. The next level is lower and upper case. The final level is whole words

Type Racer – http://play.typeracer.com/
For competitive types who are good typists you can race against others online at the same time as you as you type phrases from different books. There is also a practice area where you can work on increasing your own skills rather than compete. My fingers do all kinds of horrible things in competitions but I still averaged 55 words/minute. What can you get?

Good advice from Kathy Shields, “I noticed that several of the sites are advertising based and have links to Poker sites. I didn’t follow them but Poker sites tend to advertise other adult activities and I just want to caution teachers to follow all the links before they suggest these sites to parents.”