Category: Keyboarding

Dear Otto: Are there any Good Keyboarding Apps?

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Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Kathy in South Africa:

I have been searching for an app that will help students learn basic keyboarding or even practice learning where the keys are located on the keyboard. So far, I have had no luck in finding such an app.

In the past, I haven’t been a fan of practicing keyboarding on an iPad. How can we develop speed without the bumps on f and j, the feel of separate keys. Recently, I read research (which I wish I had bookmarked–it was one teacher’s classroom experiment) showing that students type as fast on the iPad as a traditional keyboard. That has me rethinking what I thought I knew.

This is my long way of apologizing for not having firsthand experience with iPad keyboarding apps. Here’s a list from efriends in my PLN:

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Tech Tip #73: Alt+??? Brings up which Menu Command?

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each week, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I always forget the keyboard shortcuts for the menu commands. Can you give me a list?

A: I’ll do one better. MS Office 07 and 10 makes that easy. Just push the Alt key and it tells you what number or letter is associated with which menu command. (more…)

Dear Otto: Is it important that students use all fingers when typing?

Here’s a great question I got from SueAnn:

Dear Otto,

As the common core is dictating that keyboarding be taught at lower grade levels and to enhance the abilities of our students to type for longer periods of time and to develop writing skills, do believe that words per minute and accuracy is more important than correct fingering? or vise versa? We have many students that can type 35 WPM at 95% accuracy or better but do not use the correct fingering. As the technology teacher in my elementary school, I walk around when the students are doing their typing drills and encourage them to use the correct fingering during their practice time, I teach the correct fingering, we play games to learn the correct fingering we sing songs to learn the correct fingering but when they actually apply these skills in word processing I notice that their fingering is not being used correctly.

In our district we have been teaching correct hand placement and keyboarding in K-2 for several years. Starting earlier is not the issue, in my eyes. I believe that with the advent of texting and the basic issue that we do not have enough time to have formal keyboarding time on a daily basis leads to this issue. What are your thoughts? How important is correct fingering? Do you have ideas on how to help with proper fingering?

My 2nd question is: do you believe that word processing and typing are two different things? And if so, how do we get our students to transfer these skills? As I stated earlier, I can get my students to type 35 WPM with 95% accuracy during a drill, but to have my 6th graders sit down and type to a prompt in a word processing document for 3 pages off the top of their heads is an entirely different task. One that needs many repeated trials. I believe the second has very little to do with keyboarding and much to do with sentence structure, paragraph development, language skills and time. What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any ideas on how to make the leap from typing drills to word processing?

I do think using the correct fingers is important. I discuss this as ‘using the finger closest to the key’ and ‘no flying hands or fingers’ to get students to think about there’s a right finger for the key. They wouldn’t use just any finger playing the piano (so many youngers play piano, it’s a good analogy) or violin. Keyboarding is the same. To be most efficient and effective requires appropriate skills. The majority of my top keyboarders do it with skill–and then exceed 45/55 wpm. There are levels of knowledge in keyboarding: 1) knowing where the keys are. That gets students faster than 20wpm. If they don’t know key placement, they will have trouble hitting 20 wpm. Your students at 35wpm definitely know where all the keys are. 2) knowing skills–posture, hands and fingers placement, that sort. That enables students to touch type (hard to touch type when your eyes have to find the key), which pushes speed up tremendously.

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Common Core Breathes Life into Keyboarding

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As you read the 100+ pages of Common Core’s ELA and Math standards, you realized that technology is woven throughout as one of the tools students use to prepare for college and career. It is mentioned at least a dozen times (I’ve truncated the bullet list for convenience, but the gist is the same)–

Expect students to demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding to type a minimum of one page [two by fifth grade, three by sixth] in a single sitting
Expect students to evaluate different media (e.g., print or digital …)
Expect students to gather relevant information from print and digital sources
Expect students to integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats
Expect students to interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., … interactive elements on Web pages)
Expect students to make strategic use of digital media
Expect students to use glossaries or dictionaries, both print and digital …
Expect students to use information from illustrations and words in print or digital text
Expect students to use a variety of media in communicating ideas
Expect students to use technology and digital media strategically and capably
Expect students to use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information

Use of technology differentiates for student learning styles by providing an alternative method of achieving conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and applying this knowledge to authentic circumstances.

New technologies have broadened and expanded the role that speaking and listening play in acquiring and sharing knowledge and have tightened their link to other forms of communication. Digital texts confront students with the potential for continually updated content and dynamically changing combinations of words, graphics, images, hyperlinks, and embedded video and audio.

The first bullet point–Expect students to demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding to type a minimum of one page [two by fifth grade, three by sixth] in a single sitting–has garnered a lot of attention from not just tech specialists, but all educators because it quantifies keyboarding skill, something not done in the ISTE national standards or many of the disparate state standards.

Last week, Washington Post writer Lindsey Layton wrote a front page article (of the Sunday Education section) on this topic and asked several teachers about their experiences with keyboarding in the classroom. I was thrilled to be included in that list and wanted to share the article with you. I know you’ll enjoy it:

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Tech Tip #59: Shortkey for the Copyright Symbol

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q:How do you create the copyright symbol in Word?

A: It’s easier than you’d think. Hold down the Alt key and press 0169. Use the keypad with the num lock on–don’t use the number row. I could not get this to work until someone pointed out that you must use the keypad. Duh.

This not only works in Office, but lots of other places, ©–like Wordpress. Cool, huh?

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Dear Otto: What are Common Core keyboarding standards?

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Here’s a great question I got from Lani :

I am trying to set up my curriculum map for 2013-14, for preK-8. This is the first year I will be actually using the lab f/t…I hope, along with library skills. I purchased several of the structured learning books & your blog has been amazing! My question, you mentioned that keyboarding is part of the CC…45wpm minimum, by end of 8th grade. I have looked at the CC State Standards, but cannot find this or any tech standards. Can you share where this is? I have new administration coming & would like to be prepared! Thank you.

Here are the relevant Common Core standards for keyboarding:

Keyboarding is addressed tangentially–saying students must be able to type *** pages in a single sitting (see CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.6 for example. The ‘pages in a single sitting’ starts in 4th grade and continues through 6th where it’s increased to three–see CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.6)
By 3rd grade, Common Core also discusses the use of keyboarding to produce work, i.e., CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.6 which specifically mentions ‘use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills)’
The keyboarding requirement that is giving teachers across the continent heartburn is that keyboarding will be required to take Common Core Standards assessments (a year off except where Districts are testing this eventuality).

It’s worth noting that CC standards are progressive–students are expected to learn material, transfer that knowledge to the next grade level where they show evidence of having learned it by using it and building on it. Therefore, the notation to ‘produce and publish writing using keyboarding skills’ in 3rd grade carries into all successive grade.

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Dear Otto: How do I teach keyboarding in a 25-minute class?

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Here’s a great question I got from Brenda:

I’ve been teaching 5th grade for 8 years, but next year will be my first year teaching as the technology specialist for 3rd-5th grades. I purchased your lesson books for these grades and am just beginning to go through them to start mapping out my curriculum. It looks like we will have a change in our specialist schedule however, so I am wondering if you have some advise on how to best structure my class in order to teach the lessons as well as focus on keyboarding skills in a shortened class time. Instead of seeing my students once every 6 days for 45 minutes, I will see them every 3 days for 25 minutes. What would you recommend? Any input you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the wealth of information and resources the website provides to those of us in these teaching positions!

What you describe is the nature of tech teaching–too much to cover in too little time. And that is especially true of keyboarding. Try these ideas:

every time students use your lab/classroom, remind them to use the good habits they learned during keyboard practice (all hands/fingers, elbows at sides, use finger nearest the key, fingers curled over home row). Those skills are for all uses–not just typing exercises.
assign homework–15 minutes 2-3 times a week, all keyboarding. Use an online website like DanceMat Typing or typing Web so it’s easy to access. I like focusing on a row at a time at the start of the year.
have class teachers help. Students learn keyboarding not to pass your test, but to complete core classroom work faster and more efficiently. The grade-level teams should be your partners in this. Ask them to remind students of good keyboarding habits (give them one of the lists in the curriculum you purchased) every time students use computers.

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Handwriting vs. Keyboarding–from a Student’s Perspective

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Every year, I have 4th-grade students compare handwriting speed to keyboarding speed. We run it like an experiment.

we discuss the evidence–pros and cons
we develop a hypothesis
we test the hypothesis (with a series of four tests)
we revise if necessary

I wanted to test some of the reasons students come up with on both sides of this issue. I framed the discussion with Common Core standards for keyboarding as well as my school’s guidelines:

students must type 25 wpm by 4th grade, 30 by 5th, 35 by 6th, 40 by 7th, 45 by 8th
students must type 2 pages in a single seating. That roughly 500 words. at the 4th grade required speed, that’s 20 minutes of typing at a single sitting

Since fourth graders for both years I’ve done this have (from a show of hands) believed handwriting was faster, I put that as pro. I should note: The pros and cons were verbal the first two times I did this. The third time, I wrote them on the SmartScreen as students commented:

Pro–handwriting is faster

- students are better at it. They’ve had more practice

- don’t have to search for the keys
- I can handwrite forever. Keyboarding–I get frustrated
- Have to use two keys for some symbols which slows it down
- Hand gets tired

- Gives you writers bump if you do it too long—hurts for 4^th graders

Con–keyboarding is faster than handwriting

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Book Review: K-8 Keyboard Curriculum

K-8 Keyboard Curriculum: The Essential Guide to Teaching Keyboarding in 45 Minutes a Week

You may think it impossible to find an effective keyboarding curriculum for the skimpy forty-five minutes a week you can devote to keyboarding. You teach what you can, but it always seems to be the same lessons—hands on home row, good posture, eyes on the copy. You wonder if it’s making a difference, or if it matters.

Yes, it does and there is a way. It requires a plan, faithfully executed, with your eye relentlessly on the goal, but if you commit, it works. In this book, The Essential Guide to Teaching Keyboarding in 45 Minutes a Week: a K-8 Curriculum, I’ll share a unique keyboarding curriculum for K-8 that I’ve seen work on thousands of students. The book includes:

A summary of the literature
Answers to the most-asked questions like ‘Can youngers learn to keyboard—and should they?’
The importance of the teacher to early keyboarders

The K-8 curriculum includes a lot more variety than keyboard exercises on installed software. Here’s a rundown of the pieces used:

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24 Keyboarding Websites for Summer

Did you promise that this summer, your child would learn to type with more than two fingers, keep his eyes off his hands, and learn to like keyboarding? Your teachers consider that important–Common Core requires

students type between 1-3 pages at a sitting without giving up from boredom, frustration, fatigue. To do that requires a knowledge of where the keys are on the keyb oard and what habits faciliate speedy, accurate typing.