Keyboarding
I was left wondering about something this past week that I’m not sure how to solve or even if it’s necessary. I was asked for help with keyboarding for students. The teacher was very concerned about the lack of keyboarding skills being taught today when our students type more than ever. That really got me wondering. When I was a kid, you learned to type in 9th grade whether you wanted to or not. It was not my favorite class at the time, but is by far one of the tangible evidences of a public school education that has helped me excel in so many other areas. What do you think? Do students need to have formal keyboarding skills? Does it need to be taught right away? We obviously can’t wait until 9th grade anymore!
A creative websiteI’m of two minds when it comes to formally teaching the students keyboarding. I see the absolute necessity of how I needed to learn keyboarding and its benefits to speed and accuracy. It also affords me the ease to create using a computer with no drudgery. However, I do watch this generation in marvel as they develop their own text messaging skills without any help from us! Have you tried to text message like your teenager? In the meantime, I would like to highlight a neat little online keyboarding skills builder that you can examine: Keybr.com and Learn 2 Type is a FREE typing test and typing tutor that helps you master the keyboard over the self taught hunt & peck method. There is also kid friendly version for your consideration and a FREE school version where teachers can monitor their students’ performance and improvements.An image to shareMicrosoft Office Clip Art onlineA proverb“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” Harry S. TrumanAn encouragementThe reason I am of two minds about teaching keyboard is not only the kids amazing ability to create their own systems, but the lack of creativity. I would really like to generate a dialogue about this dilemma because I can see strong points for insisting that students learn how to type on the QWERTY keyboard in a manner that will build speed and efficiency. I also see the lack of time and resources need to invest in such a rote skill. How early do you start? Children today put a mouse in their hand as if it is a normal appendage. Are they really handicapped by not learning to type like we did? Let us know some of your opinion about teaching keyboarding skills on my blog.How do you do that?Learn 2 Type has their own little video tutorials that walk you through how to use the site to build up speed and accuracy. I took the typing test five times to generate a certificate and discovered how they make their money – they charge for the certificate! Since I didn’t care for a certificate it still made the FREE part of the site very appealing. You do suffer from adware overload, but the test capabilities are awesome. My highest score was 57 WPM and my lowest was 36. The other keyboard at Keybr.com had interesting charts and tracking features and a lot less ads. Should we be teaching keyboarding in our elementary schools? Let us know what you think in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.What are teachers saying?Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches“My 4th grade class paired with a 1st grade class while researching Arctic animals for a webquest. My students set up the laptops, added favorites to the computers and assisted the 1st graders in reading the information and summarizing what they learned about their Arctic animals. It was a great learning opportunity.” Shelley Gerber, Lincoln Avenue Academy, 4th grade teacherAs always, I amUbiquitously yours,K
February 19th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor
February 20th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Fantastic post. Bookmarked, tagged, saved. I do wonder whether people will start to develop Blackberry like keyboards for computers. Some kids are REALLY fast on those. If you’re comfortable, why not stay consistent across all platforms?
February 26th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I have been a business teacher for 11+ years now and one of the main subjects that I teach each year is keyboarding. To be able to keyboard proficiently is a life skill that these kids are going to need regardless of their career choice. In the business world time equals money and employers are not going to pay someone to spend a lot of time typing…it is not a “value added” activity.
Ideally students should be learning to keyboard during their elementary years. However, many elementary schools do not have sufficient computers for all students to learn. In addition, the size of children’s hands and the development of fine motor skills also need to be taken into consideration. Third through fifth grade is really about the ideal time.
Another factor to consider with allowing kids to develop their own “method” is their reliance on using just a couple of fingers in their keying. Due to the repetitive nature of typing it is much better for hands to have the typing distributed among the fingers. And, to teach them proper wrist position to help ward off injuries such as carpel tunnel syndrome.
I usually tell my students that when they were little children they were taught to print because that is how small children communicate. As they grew older they were taught cursive to help them develop speed in their writing. Now that they are growing closer to adulthood they are learning to type because that is how adults communicate.