Apr
27th

Typing Software: Enough To Teach Kids Keyboarding Skills?

Categories: Typing For Kids, Typing Practice |

Typing software and apps are super smart these days – and super fun. For example, who wouldn’t like to learn how to touch type while having fun playing a game with friends? I know I would!

Typing software teaches you how to touch type correctly so that you can gradually improve your typing speed. Before you know it, you can touch type without looking constantly at your keyboard, and without wasting so much time fixing typos.

So much is done on line these days, starting in grade school, that children need this skill even earlier in life than ever. Today’s schools now put the emphasis on teaching children how to touch type with the correct technique and appropriate speed.

As more and more people take on careers and jobs that include touch typing in one form or the other, it is more urgent than ever that students learn from the best, and today’s software and apps are very good. But are they good enough?

The Role of Technology

At first, it was thought that touch typing software would soon replace teachers, or that students would learn on their own how to touch type. But typing software and apps were never meant to replace teachers. Instead, the best of them are designed to make a teacher’s life easier and a student’s learning more efficient.

It turns out that the best teaching method is a combination of human instruction and intelligent technology. Combining the two gives children everything they need: the necessary encouragement and overseeing of a human being and the efficiency and structure of a touch typing program or cloud app.

Touch typing is 99.9% technique and 0.01% speed training. If you get the principles of touch typing right, speed will come naturally the more you practice.

When should children start learning keyboarding?

Millennials learned how to touch type in their high school computer science classes, or sometimes in a business-related class after they graduate, or perhaps at college later.

Today, with computers and other technologies introduced in the classroom in the first and second grade, it’s no surprise that students need to learn early on how to use these technologies. What we need to do is make sure we help them implement the right keyboarding techniques.

Getting children to improve their cognitive automaticity means that handwriting is no longer an impediment to how fast they can think. The faster children type the more they can think, in a sense. But that’s not all. Getting children to improve their motor skills early on is no longer an extra, optional skill for students. It’s a precondition for creating tomorrow’s efficient, talented workforce.

The moment students no longer have to think where each finger goes or which key is reserved for which hand, their intellect is freed from this cognitive burden. Their brains are able to think, experiment and learn ever more quickly.

Bringing teachers and technology together

Good typing programs are intuitive and user-friendly. They’re also equipped with essential features that make student monitoring and progress optimization easier than ever. The teacher can save the time they used to spend creating typing exercises, and instead focus on helping students to learn at their own pace, while the typing software automatically reports on every student’s progress, and provides challenges and opportunities for learning further.

Something that would take a lot of resources, money, time and effort before – teaching kids keyboarding skills – can now be done efficiently with a bit of help from touch typing programs.


Check out Typesy Community and exchange ideas related to touch typing, keyboarding, learning, technology, and Typesy program itself. Login with your Typesy Account here: https://community.typesy.com/