In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.
Today’s tip: 10 Best Keyboarding Hints
Category: Keyboarding
This poster has ten keyboarding hints that cover the most common mistakes students make that prevent them from excelling at keyboarding:
- Tuck your elbows against the sides of your body. This keeps your hands in the right spot—home row—at the right angle (parallel to the rows).
- Use your right thumb for the space bar. That leaves your hands ready, on home row.
- Curl fingers over home row—they’re cat paws, not dog paws.
- Use inside fingers for inside keys, outside fingers for outside keys. This is a great rule of thumb until students start touch typing.
- Use the finger closest to the key you need. Sounds simple, but this isn’t what usually happens with beginners.
- Keep your pointers anchored to f and j. Notice the tactile bump on those keys so you don’t have to look at the keyboard to find homerow.
- Play your keyboard like you do a piano (or violin, or guitar, or recorder). You’d never use your pointer for all keys. Don’t do it on a keyboard either.
- Fingers move, not your hands. Hands stay anchored to the f and j keys
- Add a barrier between the sides of the keyboards. I fashioned one from cover stock. That’ll remind students to stay on the correct side of the keyboard
- Don’t use caps lock for capitals! Use shift.
There’s an eleventh in the poster. Can you tell which one that is?
Buy the entire 169 Real-world Ways to Put Tech into Your Classroom.
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
