There is an interesting debate on keyboarding skills (aka touch typing) over on Classroom 2.0. Some American schools are teaching it from age 5, and I strongly approve. Keyboarding is the Fourth ‘R’ in the 21st Century.
Keyboarding
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There is an interesting debate on keyboarding skills (aka touch typing) over on Classroom 2.0. Some American schools are teaching it from age 5, and I strongly approve. Keyboarding is the Fourth ‘R’ in the 21st Century.
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Yacapaca 
4 responses to “Keyboarding”
Hi
Can someone explain to me WHY primary children do not learn keyboarding skills alongside reading and writing? Size of keyboard maybe?! Not surprisingly, being able to key in thoughts as they spring to mind spontaneously is extremely motivational.
As an ex IT Tutor teaching Adults I believe all primary shool age children should be taught keyboarding skills. I also do not understand why this is not part of the curriculum. Once they have learnt to ‘peck’ it is very difficult to ‘unlearn’ these habits. This should be taught as soon as children are sound in their knowledge of the alphabet, and writing lowercase and uppercase letters. As for size maybe a smaller keyboard with just the QWERTY keys (I know we all hate it but that is what we still use in the real world), Shift and Caps Lock and arrow keys is required?
Touch typing has been a huge advantage to me over the years. In teaching, people have admired my planning documents but I would take much much longer to handwrite them. Speedy, spellchecked and legible; a winning combination for any student.
Just lately pupils who have dyslexic tendancies, dyspraxia and handwriting problems etc. are being recommended for ICT assessments which could enable them to have the provision of a laptop computer supplied by the LEA.
These requests are coming from occupational therapists, SENCos, parents and from Annual Reviews.
In most cases the pupil cannot ‘touch type’ and despite their handwriting / spelling problems their handwriting is much quicker than their typing.
Recommendations given after the assessment are for the pupil to follow a touch tying course. However when the school request a follow up assessment 6 months later because the pupil has completed the touch typing course, the pupil is most often unable to type without looking at the keys and using the correct fingering.
Please, oh please encourage pupils to use the keyboard with more than one finger. There is enough material out there to teach keyboard skills. Folens used to do lovely worksheets which when practiced on a daily basis allowed a pupil to touch type right from the nursery class.
PLEASE TEACH TOUCH TYPING SKILLS.