Recently, I heard from a father who said,  “you don’t know me, but I have to say how impressive your method is! My late Asperger’s son was also so frustrated with the pen/pencil, but flourished on a keyboard.  Keep up the good work”.

I wanted to know more about his son and asked for a bit more information on his success story.  These are some of the comments:

“My son Ryan, who with Asperger’s Syndrome and legally blind, had some real challenges in being able to keep up with mainstream class work, especially in regards to getting his assignments turned in on time and legible….

After several I.E.P.’s, it was decided that he should try taking his notes and completing his assignments by computer, since Ryan was somewhat proficient on the computer already since he used one at home. After only a short period of time of a little coaching on typing skills, Ryan found that he would be able to keep up with note taking in class just as fast as any of his classmates. He got to the point where he learned the keyboard so well, that he rarely had to look at it. Not only was he able to keep accurate notes from class, but he was able to get his homework done faster too, which made him happy since that gave him more time to use his computer for the things that he loved, which was anything and everything music.

… In Ryan’s case, using a keyboard instead of a pencil in class was a true blessing for him and his teachers who had to read over the assignments”

So educators, when the school week is over and your weekend starts to kick in, take a moment to reflect on those A-Ha Moments of your students!  For me, those moments are what inspires me to continue to be the best teacher I can be!

The post What Inspires Me appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” John D. Rockefeller

Doesn’t that say it all!  My new mission is to get schools to throw out their ‘old school mentality’ and embrace the new ways of doing things.  Students have a different mentality towards learning because of the way they were brought up with technology.  Their brains work faster, their learning style is quicker and they expect to multitask as they are learning.

As Alan Cohen says: “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”

The post Out with the Old… In with the New! appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

I read an article in The Hartford Courant about “allowing students to bring to school any online device they had- Smartphone, tablet or laptop- for use in class as teachers saw fit.”  Educators are realizing that it makes no sense to stop students from using the digital tools they use outside of school.”

I totally agree with this but I do have one concern.  Why would you hand a student a laptop and NOT teach them how to touch type beforehand?  You don’t drive a car until you take driver’s ed….you don’t jump into a pool before you learn to swim….you don’t give a child a book without teaching them how to read first.  My point is that there are steps to learning how to do something.  You don’t start at step 10 and work backwards!  You start at the beginning.  Typing is the same concept!  “It’s no good expecting children to be able to produce a document quickly and accurately on a computer without giving them the skills to do it. It’s like asking them to write a story and not giving them a pen,” says teacher Zoe Clements.

Why is “typing class,” if it’s offered at all, relegated to just 30 to 45 minutes a week?  Isn’t it something a person will use throughout their school and working career?  When typing is taught, most school systems resort to an off the shelf, video game based program that can’t possibly produce touch typists in such a limited time span.  I maintain that proper typing skills are critical to future success and we must find a better way to teach it.

Think of an athlete. Hitting a baseball, throwing a football, or kicking a soccer ball is effortless… a result of repeated practice. They perform basic skills naturally, without having to focus on the fundamentals because they’ve created muscle memory in their arms and legs.  Now, think of a child who knows how to touch-type.  When students can learn to type fast without thinking about where their fingers are, they can concentrate on the words they will use to express their thoughts. It’s a life-long learning skill.  That’s the science behind the “fluency” approach to touch-type teaching.

The fluency, or timed approach to teaching is not revolutionary but twenty years of research has taught us to break up the exercises into learning opportunities so students can maintain a sense of accomplishment and slowly build muscle memory in their fingers.  Most children learn a new skill by first practicing simple moves, then adding more difficult ones as they gain confidence.  With a dedicated commitment by the student and teacher/parent, our studies show the average student can begin to see results in their keyboarding skills in just a few months, practicing just 15 minutes a day!

We also maintain a strong belief in the use of incentives.  In our curriculum, the use of games as a teaching method is frowned upon.  Our society is built upon the premise that success should be rewarded, so we prefer to give the student a limited opportunity to play pre-selected games each time they master a new skill, not as a means of learning the skill itself.

It is no secret that we live in an age where the ability to effectively and efficiently use computers is paramount.  Teachers and administrators spend countless hours and thousands of dollars developing new ways to prepare students for the digital future.   It’s time to place an effective typing curriculum near the top of the list.

The post Time to get serious about the Typing Program you are using! appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

As Mickey Rooney says, “You always pass failure on the way to success.”

My job is to be sure I give my students enough skills to use when fighting for success.  There will be plenty of roadblocks in their lives.  The secret is to be able to jump over the obstacles and keep yourself in a forward motion.

As Sir Winston Churchill reminds us, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

So now I HAVE come upon a personal roadblock.  I have noticed that one skill is missing from their curriculum….learning how to touch-type.  Now you may think this is a minor skill when you think of all the subjects they need to concentrate on in school.  BUT we have placed computers in front of students without giving them the skills to use them efficiently.  You don’t put a book in front of a child without teaching them to read!!!

So my plea is to reinstate a typing program into their curriculum.  If not in school then at home.  You can’t imagine what great success comes to students when they put down the pencil (roadblock) and learn to type.  It unleashes their creativity and allows them to love writing again.

Lets work together in turning this student

into this one:

Whether you use Keyboard Classroom Typing Program or not, please spend time educating yourself on the different programs and find one that works…the first time….for your student!

Because as Malcolm S. Forbes said,

One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.

The post I found my Passion! appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

According to the authors of a report from the National Summer Learning Association: “A conservative estimate of lost instructional time is approximately two months or roughly 22 percent of the school year…. It’s common for teachers to spend at least a month re-teaching material that students have forgotten over the summer. That month of re-teaching eliminates a month that could have been spent on teaching new information and skills.”

Here are some suggestions to keep your child’s mind occupied in the summer!

http://blog2.imaginelearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/summer-activities-handout.pdf

There is ONE activity missing from that list. Learning how to type!  It’s so important for your child to learn how to type once and for all.  Take the time this summer to introduce them to a typing program that will not only work the first time BUT they will enjoy practicing!

The Keyboard Classroom Typing Program is the one to buy!

Parents and children are raving about it!  Check out the website at www.KeyboardClassroom.com and start your kids learning how to type this summer.  They will thank you when their first assignment in September is to write about their summer vacation.  Those students who type their assignment will be more creative, use a larger vocabulary and finish faster!  What student wouldn’t want that skill!

Carrie Shaw is President of Keyboard Classroom, a unique, “fluency-based” learn-to-type curriculum (www.KeyboardClassroom.com).   She can be reached by email, carrie@keyboardclassroom.com.

The post Preventing the Summer Slide appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

Instead of watching the keyboard as you type, you watch the screen, and you type without looking.  You simply learn the position of each key on the keyboard, and through practice your fingers develop muscle memory and NOW you will always know where the keys are …without looking!

Once the process becomes automatic you only have to think of a word for it to appear on the screen. I find it a very enjoyable way to work, because it’s less tiring, and you don’t have to keep shifting your eyes from keyboard to screen.

Here are some amazing benefits to typing:

• Because you’re watching the screen as you type, you can instantly spot any typing errors and correct them straightaway.

• Touch-typing helps free your mind from the mechanics of what you’re doing, helping you to focus on the task in hand.

•  Nowadays we spend more and more time on the computer. We use computers to communicate with our friends, create new documents, and find information. We spend an increasing amount of our time with the computer. And despite the rise of other ways of interaction (like speech recognition), the main way of interacting with the computer is still typing. You need to type to tell the computer what you want.

How to learn:

There’s only one way to learn how to type.  You need  to commit yourself to learning “how” to type properly.  You need to “invest” your time.  Then you need to choose a proven, successful how-to-type program and start “practicing!”

I strongly recommend buying Keyboard Classroom (www.keyboardclassroom.com) to help you learn.

• —Keyboard Classroom was developed by educators for children ages 8 and up.

• —It uses a back-to-basics approach to teaching using 1:00 exercises called “fluencies” to develop muscle memory.

• —The program prevents students from advancing too quickly by requiring them to demonstrate proficiency at each level of learning.

• —It does not use games as teaching tools but as rewards for achievement.

• —Patent-pending FINGER GUIDES are provided free with the software, assuring proper finger placement and “home-row proficiency.”

Overall, if you want to increase your productivity and have more success, then learn to type properly…NOW!

www.KeyboardClassroom.com

Carrie Shaw is President of Keyboard Classroom, a unique, “fluency-based” learn-to-type curriculum (www.KeyboardClassroom.com).   She can be reached by email, carrie@keyboardclassroom.com.

The post You Need to Type to Tell the Computer What You Want appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

One of my favorite articles was from Sir Ken Robinson.  The point of Robinson’s talk is that the current education system is designed to squander creativity . Children are steered away from unusual instincts toward the traditional skills that will lead to secure jobs.  He said “Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth-for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.  When children enter school, Robinson argues, they do so without a fear of being wrong. He tells the story of a quiet girl drawing at the back of a classroom. Her teacher came up and asked what she was drawing. The girl said, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher said no one knows what God looks like. The girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

Another good blog came from Creative Teaching Site.  She talks about shaking up the teaching process:  http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/teach6.htm

So, anyone in the education field, whether it be in a classroom, as a counselor, on the sports field, etc. LET’s set aside the first 5 minutes of the time we have with the students and throw something at them that they don’t expect (obviously I am not talking about physical objects!!).  Some suggestions are:

• Begin with a ‘reading’….a famous quote, “Murphy’s Law”, a startling statistic.
• Do a demonstration of something.
• Keep an inventory of ‘things’ to pass out. 
• Appear in costume.
• Play a quick game.
• End your time with a quote.  Something that relates to their world!

I’ll be waiting to hear your responses to these suggestions!  I am sure there will be some ‘A-Ha” Moments!

The post Creativity in the Classroom appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

http://mrpullen.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/what-do-the-kids-want-to-learn/

The post What Students are Thinking! appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

www.fastcompany.com/most-creative-people/2011/sal-khan-khan-academy

The post This is How Children Learn! appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.

My three main reasons for teaching students to type are:

•  If you wouldn’t give a child a book without  teaching them ‘how’ to read then WHY would you put a computer in front of a student without teaching them ‘how’ to type?

• Typists are better writers because touch-typing frees the mind from mechanics, allowing students to focus on ideas.

• Typing is a skill they’ll use every day!

My goal is to get parents and students to understand how important it is to develop typing skills when they are in elementary school.

Here are some steps for “developing a new skill.”

♦  Clearly identify the skills you actually want to build:
When trying to identify the skill you want to build, you need to be able to state it specifically enough so that you can easily devise a plan for building that skill.  Ask yourself these two questions, “what do I specifically want to learn?” and “why do I want to learn it?”

♦ Set aside time to focus specifically on building those skills:
When building this skill you will need persistence, and persistence is a commitment to practicing that skill every day, or at least frequently enough that you don’t begin to forget what you’ve learned before the next session

♦ Invest in top-quality resources for learning.
Many people attempt to learn a new skill by using free tutorials or a hand-me-down book bought at a garage sale in 1972. Don’t!  Ask people who are experts what they recommend for a beginner. Gather good resources, not whatever you stumble across. Don’t skimp on the quality of the learning resources.

 ♦ Use something in the “real world” to work on as you learn:
For some skills, merely practicing will suffice, but for others, it pays great dividends to work on a real project as you learn your skills.  When learning how to type be sure to type papers, emails and reply to Facebook and LinkedIn as much as you can.  This will reinforce the transfer of what you are learning to your real life actions.

♦ Get started. Now. Not later:
Just do it. If you’re sitting there thinking, “Yeah, that sounds good, but it seems like too much effort”, just toss that kind of thinking aside and get started. Set aside some time each day for this – even just fifteen minutes – and start digging in. Commit to it, start learning, and you’ll never regret it.

So, for the goal of learning how to type, here are some answers to some important questions:

What skills do I want to build?  I want to be able to learn how to type without looking at my fingers.

What’s the game plan?  I will practice 15 minutes a day.

What resources am I using?  There are hundreds of free online typing programs and programs that use games and cartoon characters to teach typing.  It’s important to weed through all the junk and find a program that has documented pedagogy.  You want to learn how to type by building muscle memory in your fingers by use of repetition.  This will allow you to learn the location of the letters without much thought! You want a program with a proven track record of accomplishing the new skill in a set period of time.

What are my clear goals?  My goals revolve around being able to type without using the “hunt and peck” method.  I want to be able to look at the screen while I type.  I want to be able to cut down on the time it takes me to write a paper, respond to an email or a Facebook post.

Where will this typing skill take me in life?  Typing with efficiency and consistency can take you places in your school work, career and personal life!

In today’s society, typing is the key to getting a great job. Most jobs require some degree of computer work, and knowing how to type quickly and efficiently will make you more marketable than your fellow worker who simply “finger pecks” at the keyboard. You can honestly state, that learning to type is an investment in your career future.

The post How to Develop a New Skill appeared first on Keyboard Classroom.