Touch typing for kids

Look for the US army syllabus. They did extensive research and nailed it. 6 wk intensive course.

NB they need to keep using it for a year to get it locked in.

In the 80s I proposed to a group of senior educationists that we remove joined up writing and copperplate from the school syllabus and replace it with touch typing. I was screamed at ! I guess an idea before it's time.
 
A very good idea, I use the 'hunt and peck' method but the ability to touch type would have saved me hours or days when I was working. Every child should learn although eventually speech recognition will take over.
 
ghostlymoron said:
A very good idea, I use the 'hunt and peck' method but the ability to touch type would have saved me hours or days when I was working. Every child should learn although eventually speech recognition will take over.
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I, too, use hunt and peck but find that my typing speed matches quite well my speed of composition so not too much time lost. It would be a different matter if I was copy typing.
Re. speech recognition I personally could do with that sometimes when listening to that brand of rapid Estuary English where every word seems to be cut off part way through .... hear it quite a lot on TV.
 
TQA said:
Look for the US army syllabus. They did extensive research and nailed it. 6 wk intensive course.

NB they need to keep using it for a year to get it locked in.

In the 80s I proposed to a group of senior educationists that we remove joined up writing and copperplate from the school syllabus and replace it with touch typing. I was screamed at ! I guess an idea before it's time.
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If joined up writing is what we colonials call cursive writing or longhand in my day,your plan to remove it from school has been put in place over here-no more cursive taught or used in school-keyboarding & block printing by hand only!

As grandparents,with grand kids that learned cursive before it was banned,we are thrilled!
By the time they graduate,we foresee oodles of jobs as "Cursive Translators" in the legal,govt. & private fields. All those ancient contracts,documents,deeds,etc. going back from 40yrs ago to the dark ages & beyond!!
Ah well-maybe OCR will be good enough to translate all that henscratching by then. :o

Cheers/ Len
 
Most kids I see can type very rapidly using just their thumbs...



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Some children get classified as slow learners because of writing problems - I was marginal, my elder son another and one of our older grandchildren in the US was also in that category. His school identified the problem early after the family went to the US. They gave him a laptop and at the age of 9 he got a touch typing package. He was a techno buff even then. Now, in his mid 20s he works in San Francisco as a consultant in a top rate software house.

Our two youngest grandchildren are 9 and 11. They are becoming computer literate. I want them to be able to use computers properly. Hence my request for an appropriate touch typing package.
 
franksingleton said:
Some children get classified as slow learners because of writing problems - I was marginal, my elder son another and one of our older grandchildren in the US was also in that category. His school identified the problem early after the family went to the US. They gave him a laptop and at the age of 9 he got a touch typing package. He was a techno buff even then. Now, in his mid 20s he works in San Francisco as a consultant in a top rate software house.

Our two youngest grandchildren are 9 and 11. They are becoming computer literate. I want them to be able to use computers properly. Hence my request for an appropriate touch typing package.
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Now you've made me feel bad. I accept there are lots of kids that have various learning "problems" in various subjects,& they must be accommodated. One of my sons is dyslexic & has difficulty reading text or cursive.
My point (badly made) is that cursive will still be required IMHO for reading old documents,at least until technology catches up. Cursive has been a hot topic in our schools.
No offence was intended. / Len
 
franksingleton said:
They gave him a laptop and at the age of 9 he got a touch typing package. He was a techno buff even then. Now, in his mid 20s he works in San Francisco as a consultant in a top rate software house.
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As a software engineer, the idea that typing skills have anything to do with programming ability is baffling to me.

At best there is a slight correlation, purely because we do spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard, but no more so than for, say, Harry Potter fanfic writers or people who spend all their time on cookery forums.

Your grandson obviously had the necessary aptitude and interest for software development; giving him a laptop may well have helped fuel that interest. But the typing software on it? Nope.

Pete
 
Mavis Beacon is the best I've found for teaching touch typing but make sure you get the right language/keyboard layout - obviously US English is a no-no unless there are going to be US based. Another tip is to disable any spell-checkers so they have to think about the spelling. I think equally important is regular access to something with decent keyboard attached to it to practice on. There's a surprising number of places that offer courses and training especially for kids during the holidays too but I can't say whether they are any good. Could have the advantage of giving Mum and Dad a break during the long hols though!

Regarding programming I can highly recommend Code Club https://www.codeclub.org.uk/. It's designed to get kids thinking in right way and programming as early as possible so it makes sure that they get results as quickly as possible. A 9 year old will have written his first simple game within a few weeks usually, possibly less. All are staffed by volunteers who are usually working in IT as their day job.
 
prv said:
As a software engineer, the idea that typing skills have anything to do with programming ability is baffling to me.

At best there is a slight correlation, purely because we do spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard, but no more so than for, say, Harry Potter fanfic writers or people who spend all their time on cookery forums.

Your grandson obviously had the necessary aptitude and interest for software development; giving him a laptop may well have helped fuel that interest. But the typing software on it? Nope.

Pete
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+1000

for the record, I learnt touch typing when I started my PhD at 26. Yes, it did help immensely on the research and all the hours of typing involved.
I also happened to work a fair amount on unstructured, untrained programming. Never made money out of that, but surely spent too much time on it.
Did touchtyping helped? Not at all, more help was in swearing when fingers hit the wrong bracket or parenthesis on touch typing and spent the next 10mins trying to figure out why the thing didn't work, or produced funny shapes (was AutoLisp in AutoCAD back then...) :D

V.
 
We have used Typequick in our school for a few years, with great success. It is based on an expedition around Australia and the children find it highly motivating. It's a browser-based package, so you will need a live connection, but it's very good value. All our pupils are given an account and I can follow their progress online. We have a number of 10-11 year-olds who are up to 35+ wpm. The quickest has now exceeded 60 wpm.

The distributor in the UK is Andy Stevenson. Sorry I don't have his contact details to hand, but Google will have the info.

Also want to add support for codeclub. It's excellent.
 
prv said:
As a software engineer, the idea that typing skills have anything to do with programming ability is baffling to me.

At best there is a slight correlation, purely because we do spend a lot of time in front of a keyboard, but no more so than for, say, Harry Potter fanfic writers or people who spend all their time on cookery forums.

Your grandson obviously had the necessary aptitude and interest for software development; giving him a laptop may well have helped fuel that interest. But the typing software on it? Nope.

Pete
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That's a bit harsh for you Pete!

Agreed, being able to type has little to do with being able to program but, if a child is put off from learning coding because of his difficulty interacting with the keyboard, then there is a connection.

When I first started programming, it was all to do with holes in bits of paper (yes - sometimes punched by hand!). The arrival of the teletype and the golf ball were earth shattering events!

I found this was gentle - https://www.typingclub.com/typing-qwerty-en/keys-jf.html
 
I did not intend to suggest that keyboard skills were related to programming ability. I am gar too long in the tooth to know that. When our (now) American grandson was in the UK at the age of 8 the school was writing him off despite the fact that he was way above average in what he read and understood. Even at that age he had good analytical ability. He just had problems in putting ideas down on paper. In the US having been given use of a laptop he was able to express himself. I agree that he would have prospered as a software engineer regardless – as long as he was not damned at school.

My elder son had to take his English language GCE three times despite doing well in all other subjects – including English literature. In the old school certificate days, he would have been a failure at that level. I never found writing easy. My mind would run far ahead of my pen. Quite simply I. my elder son and my grandson could not write legibly quickly enough. It was all too easy to give up. Maybe we had a mildly dyslexic problem in that, even when we wrote, we did not see the errors in our script. Others found it difficult to read in any case.

The point that I am trying to make – and I have seen it as a father, a grandfather and in my own case – the mechanics of writing with pen or pencil make it difficult for some kids to get on at school. Our youngest grandchild, 9, is already writing stories on a keyboard. With the proper skills learned at a young age she has the potential to steam full ahead. Her brother, 11, is bright enough in numerical matters. He has ability in other subjects but gets held back by the tedious business of putting pen to paper. I strongly sympathise with that syndrome. He is getting used to using a keyboard. With greater facility he will be more likely to realise that potential.

Mavis Beacon has been mentioned twice so maybe that is what I will get for them. Any other suggestions?
 
I omitted to mention that we originally tried Typequick specifically for our pupils who had dyslexic-spectrum symptoms, but found it so successful for them that we extended it to the whole school population, again, with great success.

Good luck in your search, anyway.
 
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