Hi,
In my travels I have found this blog – I don’t believe it is on wordpress but all in the same… Check it out!

TEACHERS AT RISK WEBSITE

Would love for you to take your time to read (or skim if you need, time is precious) and comment on your views on the teaching of touch typing.

A lot of schools say there’s nothing wrong with typing with two fingers, but Westwood disagrees. “It’s like trying to write with a feather and a pot of ink – painfully slow,” she says. “A fluent touch-typist can type up to eight times faster than your average two fingered ‘hunt and peck’ keyboard user.”

As I compose this post, I am looking only at the screen with no need to watch my fingers or consciously use brain power to move my fingers to write the flood of thoughts I have. This is what has been labelled “Touch Typing.”

Year 9 and 10 at highschool I elected to do “Business Office Procedures” in which part of the practical component was to achieve atleast 98% accuracy in touch typing… We did this mainly through a touch typing program, games and repition.

Although I take this skill for granted, upon reflection I feel this skill has been invaluble. I have encountered many at uni, in libraries, in group work even at schools who are astounded at the typing skills that I completely take for granted.

I have been elected to do the group’s typing as I am the quickest. Touch typing allows me to multi-task more easily and transfer thoughts into texts more efficiently.

In year 9 and 10 I had no career direction at all but I considered touch typing a valuble skill to have under my belt to propell me into the workforce.

I have been looking around for other’s views on teaching touch typing.

The main consensus I run into is that teaching children touch typing will equipt students with the skills students will need not only in their later careers but during their schooling journey towards those careers such as wordprocessed assessments.

As with many other KLA’s, implementation in schools documented on the internet, site “the enthusiasm of the teacher in typing is key to achieving good progress… children need to be closely monitored and encouraged to do better. Being left with the programme is not enough.”

Interestingly I also found that touch typing can also assist those with visual impairment or Specific Learning Difficulties, such as dyslexia, in several ways:

• Clarity of presentation and legibility of work
• Speed of input – allowing the child to keep pace with the teacher
• Spelling – tactile learning of spelling patterns
• Handwriting – typing reduces the physical and mental pressure for a struggling writer
• Presentation – editing work is easier
• Empowerment – good keyboarding skills promotes independence, confidence and success.

Funnily enough touch typing education is extended from just using the right fingers for the right keys but also incorperates a focus on correct posture and correct height to the keyboard.

If information technology is being used to transform the classroom and learning, students will need tools to allow them access to this transformation.

Do we focus on touch typing?

Do we focus on handwriting?

Do we do both simultaneously?

References

http://www.touchtypers.com/

http://redbridgeprimaryit.blogspot.com/2007/09/touch-typing.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/learning-to-type-lessons-in-one-of-lifes-key-skills-516627.html

http://www.amandamcleod.org/touch-typing/

http://www.raisingkids.co.uk/todaysnews/news_230205_02.asp

This week just happened to be my presentation on “Authoring and Multimedia” where we were authoring using Adobe Fireworks and uploading our photos into Animoto to make it even more multimedia-ish!!

Unfortunately, as technology would work for me…Animoto was down and would not upload photos meaning our class missed out on that bit. We managed to keep going with everything else and will continue it next week.

It reminds me that this too can happen in the classroom. A beautifully planned lesson could turn to banana mush if technology is not operating correctly. I guess, in your own classroom it is a lot easier to manage as you can move onto the next lesson… but still a point can be made to be careful and not 110% reliant on technology – great as it is!

In talking the tut group through uploading their photos, creating a new folder and useing Adobe Fireworks to edit their photos it became extremely clear that there are so many small explicit, steps that in using a computer and associated programs we take for granted, that for some children, need to be explicitly taught. I guess this is similiar to Paul suggesting that how to word searches in search engines would be a great and necessary lesson for children. Small things that we don’t even register, we need to ensure children have mastery over it.

Hi all,

As part of my journey towards full time teaching, and ceasation of primary teaching study, we are to explore Information Technology and the Classroom (EDTS100).

One such way, we shall do is is by completion on this ‘eportfolio.’

Slowly learning to navigate my way around WordPress and the plethora of programs that we can use to enhance our porfolios!

I could honestly get lost in this world and time seems to pass ever so quickly when all I have done is test which theme background looks the best!

This all merley acts as a reminder of the world we are currently in, standing on the tip of the iceburg of technology… even more so for the future generation.

Hope you enjoy keeping me company along my information technology insight transformation for all this exposure to hardware and software is sure to do something!

Amy