Keyboarding

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eloise Glorieux on May 23, 2007 at 7:34pm

I am also a technology teacher in K-5 environment. I have also been struggling with what to do about teaching keyboarding skills. There seems to be so much more to do in the short period of time you have students. Blogging sounds interesting, but I am not so sure that the students will keyboard while blogging or just "pick and peck." I would love to hear more about how others incorporate this into their curriculums.

Permalink Reply by Elise Mueller on May 25, 2007 at 9:35pm

Hello iMon,
I am a classroom teacher with students in grades 3-5. While I have a tremendously supportive Library Media Specialist, I find it unrealistic to expect that he would be able to teach my students all of the tech skills, including keyboarding, necessary in just 30 minutes a week. I see myself as the technology teacher and the lab as a place for my students to practice the skills they learn in my classroom. For keyboarding we use Ultrakey and a variety of free online games. Students start in the fall and have regular opportunities in class and in the lab to practice keyboarding using specific keyboarding programs. My students blog regularly and need keyboarding skills to blog quickly and efficiently. I would never use blogs as a medium to learn or practice keyboarding, anymore than I would use this comment as an opportunity for me to practice my fractured keyboarding skills!

Permalink Reply by Ian Nixon on May 26, 2007 at 6:37am

As I think about this topic and continue to dwell on how to improve it within my school I think about the problem we all face with any topic in a classroom. Time, time, time is always the crunch or the squeeze on many things we do. However as short as the time is, I do not see that changing in the near future. I too have student for what always seems to be a very brief 45 minutes twice a week, and keyboarding at the beginning of the class for a brief 10-12 minutes at most, can be a good focusing technique too. Clearly, 10 minutes in the lab once or even twice a week is not enough to get them to be typist. I think the only way keyboarding can be successful is to run a campaign in school that has the buy-in of teachers and parents to see that when students are at any keyboard they are following the correct procedures. It takes a village thinking here seems to work the best, but it also takes time, organization and belief from the stakeholders that this is a time worth endeavor. In addition, holding a friendly keyboarding competition/demonstration/exhibition or whatever you may call it throughout the year that doesn’t just include the students, but the teachers and parents is also a good way to try to get some to measure up and buy-in to the efforts. Also, suggestions and links to parents that students can use free online typing tools at home to practice helps. Using these same free online typing tools during the friendly competition/demonstration/exhibition or how every you would like to present it helps promote their use at home for practice. Is this all fool proof keyboarding plan? No, I do not think so. I do not think you will get all to get on board, but IF you can show value in the end results of learning how to keyboard, then it is reasonable to believe you will get some takers to start. Start this process with your teacher pioneering-types helps your process too. The followers will eventually jump on board and later you will see the settlers wanting to go west too, but it all takes time to build as I believe it is a culture that one is growing within the school. Blogging is not something I have used, but plan to incorporate now as I believe it can truly provide a nice change to routine. Anything that can help take away from routine could be helpful. After all learning how to type has 10 rules for me. The first 8 rules are the same and that is practice! Number 9 is accuracy and 10 is speed, which will come in time. If you do this then give yourself a realist time line to see it develop and start simple with just doing the keyboarding competition/demonstration/exhibition or whatever you may call first and then what interest possibly grow from there. Just a thought written out loud as I still continue to ponder how to improve this endeavor.

Permalink Reply by Candace Elmore on May 30, 2007 at 10:09am

I, too, am a computer lab coordinator for grades 3 - 6. Two of the 3rd grade teachers want their students to keyboard, but none of the 4th grade teachers do, so there's a gap, and some get to 5th grade without any keyboarding experience.
I always start my students with verbally teaching them homerow position, posture, hand position, etc. then they proceed to the Mavis Beacon program. I have 3rd graders who are at, or almost at, the intermediate section, where they learn to type capital letters.
The 3rd grade teachers sign up for time, the 4th - 6th have 30 minutes assigned time weekly. There are a lot of free time-slots that are available for extra time.

Permalink Reply by Dean Mantz on June 27, 2007 at 10:09pm

Our students in grades 3-5 use Typing to Learn as a software to gain/improve basic keyboarding skills. Students in grades 6-8 use Mavis Beacon along with multiple websites geared towards keyboarding skills. Many teachers have developed lessons that require students to type stories, poems, etc in MS Word, MS Powerpoint, Inspirations, etc. I will be working with teachers in the upcoming school year on blogging. The reason I have for young students blogging is to develop a confident level of expressing their thoughts and ways to possibly solve problems. The blogging option would permit interaction outside the classroom walls as well as having them defend their own views.

Permalink Reply by JoNelle on July 23, 2007 at 2:38pm

Great subject that we wrestle with each year. I am the k-5 technology teacher for my school. We use Type to Learn, Jr for k-1 and Type to Learn for 3-5. 2nd graders have used both ( for reasons of high numbers of students in our school:( ), but I feel that TTL is too high for most of them.
Generally, students use TTL the first 10 minutes of my class. Students come to my class on a rotating basis.
I found that about 10 minutes meets their attention limit- esp. for the younger ones.
With TTL,Jr I focus on what hand to use and get familiar with the keyboard. We use the SMARTBoard (large group)and individual computers.
On TTL I focused on proper position of body and hands, but not speed. I tell them at this time, muscle memory is important for accuracy - speed will come later. TTL monitors both, but I try not to comment much on speed, so that they believe that accuracy is more important now.
If anyone has studies to share on this topic I would be very interested in reading it.
With a few exceptions, students still "hunt and peck" when using Word or any other application.
THis year we will incoporate blogging and using wikis in my classes. Hmmm...maybe we will choose keyboarding as a topic to see how students feel about the subject.