As students begin working with computers at an earlier age (kindergarten at my school), I have to wonder when, exactly, is a good time for them to learn proper keyboarding. If students will be using a word processing program in third grade, it stands to reason that they should at least be familiar with the keyboard and the home key position prior to that. However, I am finding that my third graders, despite having once-a-week lessons on Type to Learn 3 in second grade, revert back to two-finger typing (“hunting and pecking”) when working on a word processor. Is it unrealistic for me to assume that a second or even a third grader would be able to type proficiently?
I spoke to several middle school students who I consider to be good typists about their keyboarding background. Interestingly, I found two commonalities in what they said. First, most of the students I spoke to learned how to type between fifth and sixth grade. Second, all of them were motivated in some way to learn how to type properly. So again I ask, “At what age should students begin learning the techniques to proper keyboarding?” Although I’m still not sure what the right answer is, I do believe that students who are going to be using computers need to, at least, be familiar with the keyboard.
As a computer teacher, I find myself in somewhat of a bind. Once my students reach the third grade, they work on a variety of curriculum-related projects in the lab. That leaves me with two issues to address – a relatively small amount of time to continue to practice keyboarding and pending due dates for class projects. Should I continue to emphasize proper keyboarding when, clearly, the student is still a slow and developing typist, or should I allow them to type as they want as long as they meet the deadlines set by their classroom teacher? There are obvious drawbacks to both. If I emphasize proper keyboarding, students may not be able to complete their work by the day it is due, but if I allow them to type however they want, the bad typing habits they develop will become engrained and difficult to break when they are older. What are your thoughts???
2 comments:
Hello Maria. Cool looking blog, and very good subject.
Personally I feel that until the voice interface is perfected, that our learners should have keyboarding as a subject throughout their k through 12 years.
However I believe that the "Str Trek" voice interface with the ship, is not to far ahead in the future.
For more info see:
http://www.digitalriver.com/v2.0-img/operations/scansoft/site/367062/367062_dns-talk.html
It’s funny I was just pondering a similar issue on handwriting instruction after stumbling across an article in the Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001475_2.html
Should cursive writing be abandoned in favor of keyboarding? Suggestions are made that there is a relationship between students’ ability to construct more complex sentences and the development of their cursive writing.
If you haven’t seen it, http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr076.shtml
is an article that discusses when keyboarding should be taught and includes some strategies "Most research supports starting students on formal keyboarding around grade 4," says Theresa Tovey, occupational therapist in Region #4 (Chester, Deep River, and Essex) in Connecticut. "All kids do not have the eye-hand motor coordination to learn keyboarding skills earlier than that."
It also brings up the issue of handwriting. Theresa Tovey believes one reason to wait until 4th grade to teach keyboarding is that students need to develop handwriting skills as well. "Some people would say that handwriting is practically obsolete, because of the computer, but learning how to write is a necessary motor exercise," she says. "You can de-emphasize handwriting, but you can't bypass it or you lose something in developing eye-hand coordination."
Other arguments are made to support keyboarding at a younger age as well and to abandon handwriting.
As a former third grade teacher that taught both, I am interested in the findings.
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