I have had several conversations with faculty in my building, as well as some educators around the area about typing, and where it fits in the curriculum.  The old DOE technology guidelines leave keyboarding assessment up to the individual districts.  It will be interesting to see how keyboarding should be addressed in the new DOE Technology Reg’s when they come out alter this year.  What many teachers struggle with is students developing habits early on (sometimes before they reach school) and it is hard to judge how well students type, coming from various levels of personal experience.  My gut feeling is that typing should be practiced regularly in the earlier grades.  When they reach middle school, they will have basic keyboarding skills.  Unfortunately, many schools don’t have regular computer classes in the early grades, and it gets put off until elementary school.  This is where we get students with varying levels of keyboarding abilities-those that use the computer rarely, and those that use the computer all the time (OU812!  LOL!).  Of course, these types of students have a completely different set of issues (they can’t spell anything correctly-but that can be another post).

One of my tasks this year has been to review our current technology curriculum, and make adjustments to line up with the old DOE frameworks, and to make the classes more current.  Typing is still a big sticking point, since they do not have the opportunity to take computer classes in the elementary school, and do not get a regular scheduled computer class until middle school (7th grade).  Many students struggle with trying to fix habits they already use, and have been using for a long time.  Currently, they drill for about 10-15 minutes.  I know there is so much more these students are capable of doing with the computer, but are being held back by learning how to type.

This poses another question…

Is typing an “old school” skill that we no longer need to teach?  With computers being present in more homes, so we need to still teach formal typing skills?  I never took a typing class-I have my own way and it works for me.  Other students may do it differently.  I just think the days of putting a sheet of paper over the keyboard and doing “h-j-k-l-g-f-d-s-a” is and old way of doing things.  If we need to teach typing, is there another way?