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How Should Keyboarding Be Taught in Elementary School?

Matt Renwick This post was originally published at ED Tech Magazine. A teacher offers his take on instruction of a skill that standardized testing has put back at the forefront of education. When our elementary principal team learned that the new Common Core State Standards-aligned tests would be administered on computers, we had many questions and few answers. Are there enough computing stations for all third-, fourth- and fifth-graders to take this test? Do our current software and hardware meet the requirements to administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)? How will we ensure that students are able to keyboard? While our technology department was tasked with addressing the first two questions, our administrative team focused on the third. Around a decade ago, all intermediate students in our district had keyboarding instruction taught by a certified business teacher. Classroom teachers would walk their students down to the computer lab. Then the keyboarding teacher taught this skill in isolation. After 30 minutes, the students went back to the regular classroom. Modern Keyboarding Keyboarding wasn’t applied to work that was relevant or meaningful. It became another prep for teachers (myself included, as I was a fifth-grade teacher). When budget cuts came, elementary keyboarding was one of the first programs to go. With the introduction of computer-based standardized assessments, keyboarding has come to the forefront in education once again. This year, we tried a different approach so that this skill was not only taught, but also applied across…

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Typing ScienceUncategorized

Does Social Media Marketing Work For Your Business?

Social media has become a strategized corporate priority. Businesses of all sorts and sizes are jumping onto the social media marketing bandwagon, some because everyone else is doing it, others because they’ve truly realized the power social media has to offer. For social media marketing to work, a solid plan has to be in place. Blindingly engaging in social media doesn’t lead anywhere. How are you going to quantify the success of your social media marketing if you don’t know what your milestones are? Having a social media plan ensures you can engage with your company’s followers, create awareness and visibility around your brand, and hopefully turn more visitors and followers into loyal customers, thereby increasing sales. Some questions you need to answer for your social media campaigns to be effective are basic. How do you write effective tweets? What’s the best time to post on Facebook? Do you really need to use Instagram too? Once you’ve got these answers and a content marketing editorial calendar, you need to take into account the following questions: Should you ever self-promote? If you have a blog post you want to tweet about, you don’t just create promotional tweets. This is the number one mistake businesses make: using social media as marketers only, and not as end users. To appeal to your Twitter followers you need to make them feel they’re on the same page as you are, sharing the same concerns and the same tastes. They need to feel you are sharing…

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Review Sites Give Honest Feedback on Typesy™

Typesy™ helps you improve your touch typing speed and accuracy. That’s what eReflect, the software’s developer, asserts. What do others say, though? “Intuitive and advanced learning software with easy to use interface” – Typing Lounge Typing Lounge has released a review on Typesy™ in which the reviewer gets to the bottom of the software’s features, tools, and technologies. The goal-focused structure of the program is appraised by Typing Lounge, whose reviewer gives Typesy™ 9 out of 10 for goal management. As the review notes, the software is designed to be a tool for helping users achieve personal excellence. The typist is urged to practice until they’ve fully mastered their preset goals – and then to set new ones. Typing Lounge praises the software’s adaptive learning approach, its video tutorials, and its advanced progress tracking tool designed for easy charting of the user’s typing improvement. TopTenReviews awards Typesy™ its 2014 Silver award Typesy™’s balanced focus on both typing speed and typing accuracy was the winning point that convinced the TopTenReviews editors to give the program their Silver Award. The editors at TopTenReviews made sure to congratulate eReflect’s developers for their rigorous approach to teaching typing that consists of a step-by-step training module and video tutorials for guaranteed typing mastery. Vocabulary Building editors declare Typesy™ “Outstanding” Typesy™ helps people at any typing skill level to further improve their keyboarding abilities. From beginner typists to advanced users (people who type at 95 words per minute or more), the software has something to offer…

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EMOJIs, Touch Type Your Way To Create One. You Can’t Believe #13 –AMAZING! (PHOTOS)

1) 21st Century: Couple’s Way Of Communicating 2) Message: “I Got You” 3) Emoji Maybe? 4) Guess This Song! 5) Story of Miley Cyrus’ Life 6) Do You Know This Disney Song? 7) Sing Your Heart Out With Emoji Lyrics 8) Few Emojis, But Worth It! 9) Can You Think of What It Is? 10) The Mermaid Song! 11) Frozen Mania! 12) Can’t Get Over Frozen 13) Full Lyrics Song Made With Emojis 14) Christmas Is Coming! 15) One Direction FEVER! 16) Lots and Lots of Emoji Songs!

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Typing PracticeTyping Tips and TricksUncategorized

How To Become Proficient At Typing

How many practice hours does it take to become a competent typist? How long will it take to start typing at 120 words per minute if you’re a beginner at the keyboard? There’s no one answer to these questions. How fast and accurate a typist you’ll become depends on factors such as your determination, your resources, your knowledge of typing rules — and, of course, how much you’re willing to practice. Here are 3 tips to help you become proficient at typing. Track your progress frequently It’s important to monitor your progress at frequent intervals. After a few sessions of typing practice, take an online typing test to check how much you’ve improved. Keep track of your best words-per-minute rate and next time, try to break it. Tracking your typing efficiency will keep you motivated to practice more consistently and it will help you fine-tune your typing skills in no time. Keep a public or personal journal Do you have something to rant about? Keep an online journal or better yet, get your own blog. Update it frequently with whatever you’re passionate about. It can even be work-related, or devoted to the novel you’re working on. What matters is that you use it as a way of improving your typing skills. And who knows? Perhaps you’ll get an online international audience while you’re at it. Don’t think of typing as a skill Think of it as the means to an end. If you’ve got this attitude, you’ll approach typing confidently…

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Educational Connection Towards Excellence With Prof. David Pecoraro of www.studentcaring.com

Colleges years are stressful times, and students can benefit from good advice given by people who know what they’re going through. Often that advice comes from other current or former students; after all, who knows a student’s issues better than a fellow student? Well, sometimes a teacher does. The advantage that a teacher has is that they’re able to stay outside of the stress and emotion that the student is experiencing, and provide thoughtful, rational, and helpful suggestions to solve the problems that they’ve watched crop up over and over again in their classrooms. A new website created by two university professors gives students the resources they need to make the most of their college years. UV: Prof. Pecoraro, you talk about your love of teaching and the importance of helping instructors find ways to work with their students to develop a good environment for learning. If a student isn’t finding that connection with their teacher, what can the student do to improve the situation? David Pecoraro (DP): When I began to teach I discovered that I had the ability to teach a student something and they could repeat it and make money. After five years, previous students were coming back for a visit or writing to let me know that they had not just made money on a first job, but had found a career and life direction. Discovering that I was doing much more than just helping my students to make money prompted me to take my job…

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Typing PracticeTyping Tips and TricksUncategorized

Long-term and Short-term Memory: Should You Use Pen and Paper Or Type Notes On Devices?

Does laptop note-taking impair your learning? College students use laptops and tablets for note taking during lectures, so do employers during seminars and meetings. However, the switch from the traditional pen and paper note-taking model seems to have drawbacks. A new study to be published in the journal of Psychological Science explores the down side of note-taking and how the medium a person uses affects their performance later, since it directly impacts that person’s understanding and memory of what they’re in the process of jotting down. So, while typing madly to get the important points from a lecture may be much more efficient for you because of your typing skills — and let’s face it, it makes you look much smarter — apparently, using pen and paper to take notes might better improve your academic performance. According to researchers P.A. Mueller and D.M. Oppenheimer, who have compared how electronic and conventional note-taking affect cognitive processing of new information, when evaluating whether one is better than the other people will discover that conventional pen and paper provide more value in certain respects. Their paper, titled “The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note-taking,” asserts that technological devices such as laptops and tablets can in fact impair the learning process not solely because they promote an environment full of distractions, and in fact favor multi-tasking. Electronic note-taking, according to the researchers, is an automatic process that favors uncritical, verbatim transcribing of lectures. In contrast, conventional note-taking encourages…

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Upcycle Now: 14 DIY Personalized Accessories Worth Trying

1) Touch Type Your Way, Garnish Your Keyboard 2) Create Attractive Adapters 3) Eco-Friendly Cord Organizer 4) Speakers You Can Create That Works Perfectly! 5) Have A Cheap Tablet Wall-Mount 6)  Iphone Stand With Spoon & Fork 7)  Binder Clip Stand For Smart Phones 8) Name That Cord With Bread Ties 9) Glittered Cover Iphone 10) Egg Carton as Laptop Overheating Solution 11)  LEGO Stand Holder 12) Hardcover Case From Unused Books 13) Homemade Envelope Gadget Case 14) Popsicle Cases Knitted Neatly Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments

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Bring Your Own Device - A Major Trend For Collaboration In The World Of Enterprise

CEOs and managers might complain about the never-ending distraction that technology has ushered into their workers’ office lives, but the truth is the BYOD trend is substantially promoting collaboration in ways no other breakthrough has in recent decades. Collaboration beyond a company’s meeting room was once considered an occasional and costly task. Businessmen and businesswomen would need to travel across continents to close a deal, and video conferencing looked more like a desperate attempt to decipher words rather than a forum to talk business. The perfect concurrence of faster Internet bandwidth connections and hand-held devices meant one key thing for the business world: collaboration could finally become an integral part of most companies’ cultures. Add to this fine mixture the instant adoption of cloud technologies and you have a success potion like no other. The Requirements Apart from a device, people need to have in place certain skills, including good typing skills and industry-related vocabulary. This is especially important for multinational companies where transactions and interaction with overseas clients is frequent. Employees need to have the communication skills to smoothly and efficiently collaborate with people at all levels. Benefits of the BYOD Trend Collaboration is a key factor for an enterprise’s long-term health. It not only prevents fatal mistakes, it drives innovation and accelerates decision making and actual productivity. As employees participate in the BYOD movement, collaboration is expanding dramatically. It is no longer the privilege of CEOs and other top-ranking high-status people, something that translates into better communication and…

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Tracking Personal Goals In Today's Era

How do you keep track of the time and efforts you put into achieving your goals? Do you keep a journal to note important tasks and milestones, or do you have a more relaxed attitude? Most people focus on setting goals and make sure to start out by listing the nitty-gritty details required to achieve them, but only a few people spend the time to understand, much less follow, the essential goal-tracking process. Goal tracking is as important as the effort you put in achieving your goals. Without goal tracking, there’s no way of knowing how far you’ve come, what issues are begging for more time and effort, and what sub-goals have already been achieved. Here’s why it’s time well spent to track your goals, and some easy ways to do it. Accountability on Social Media Use social media or apps like Stride and Lift to track your daily, weekly, or monthly milestone achievements. By having to account for your success (or lack of success) to others, you’ll activate a sense of urgency inside yourself which motivates you to stay focused and save face by remaining committed to your goals. Goal accountability allows you to stay on track, preserves your enthusiasm, and gives you a clear purpose in how to fine-tune your efforts in achieving even more. Visual Reminders A great way to track a goal-achieving progress is to visualize it. Have a print or digital calendar on which you tick off each day in which you work on a…

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