I recently engaged in another conversation slash argument about whether it is worthwhile for seventh graders to learn keyboarding skills. I am of the opinion that drill and kill methods for keyboarding does nothing but suck the love of computing out of our young people. I have seen it happen with my own daughter and fear will happen with my son next fall.
So just to demonstrate the alternatives available today for strong keyboarding skills, I have narrated this post using the windows seven voice recognition tool. I could do some minor editing to clean it up, but instead I will leave it the way it was translated as speech to text by the narrator.
Not too bad, if you ask me.
Filed under: Computing |
Barry Dahl dot com 
Barry, Drill and kill and turns students into zombies. I remember refusing to take typing for a whole year while in high school 10th grade (1985?). I had to get special permission from my parents and the principal to take Debate and British Lit instead-everyone else took typing for a year! We bought a $10 typing tutor program for our kids they all used it for just a couple weeks. Now they all type up a storm, each using unconventional methods – but all IM and email and FB everyday( 13, 10, 8 years of age). They have been so engaged with communicating with others that quick typing just happened. Good luck!