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** Typing Sucks! **

 * A conversation challenging assumptions about teaching keyboarding **

Peter Ross

Discussion members:

Liam Webster Briar Sauro Kristin Webster Kieran Peers Adena Dershowitz Peter Ross ?

“How many words per minute can you write?”

It’s a silly question to think about, isn’t it? Then why do we ask it about keyboarding? Why do we care how fast someone types on a computer if we don’t care how fast they write on a piece of paper? Words per minute is a leftover measurement from the days of dictation, yet it is still included in every typing program. Here’s another way of looking at it - If we want students to type fast, why don’t we want them to read fast? Why don’t we teach all our students how to Speed Read (remember that?)

The absurdity of measuring typing speed is just one of the things that bugs me (Peter) about keyboarding being part of the standard technology curriculum at so many schools for so long. On a macro level, the educational value of learning how to type seems to go unquestioned at most schools, and for reasons that feel more like tradition than sound pedagogy. How many times have I heard adults say how much typing has helped them write papers in college, or reminisce about the strictness of their typing classes?

Who would think of taking college lecture notes with pen and paper when you’ve got a laptop? Well, check out this study:

[|__http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/ink-on-paper-some-notes-on-note-taking.html__]

That was some background for our group discussion.

A general consensus seemed to emerge right away that keyboarding is a strange thing to give so much importance to in schools. However, it turned out that three in our group work at schools that do not teach keyboarding at all, which really surprised me, as I’ve only ever encountered schools that taught typing. Of note is that these schools all use iPads.

In my school, like many, many others, Chromebooks have made big inroads into the classrooms. Teachers are naturally using Google Docs, (GDocs has to be the most used application in all of education right now, just like Word used to be) So, then the teachers report back that the students are struggling using the keyboard, and would we (the tech dept.) please add some more typing instruction? The endless cycle…

More laptops in classrooms earlier means more typing instruction, more typists, and that means more kids relying on laptops for everything they write. Is that really good? What if everyone in the world knew how to type? Would we have better writers?

More thoughts from the conversation:


 * One person in our group brought up how important it is to learn how to take notes, and maybe that might help a bit with taking notes on a computer.


 * There was mention of how weird it is that we still use QWERTY, and how Americans think everyone but them uses an international keyboard.


 * There was also some talk about gender and how that is still somewhat attached to typing.

Overall, I believe everyone in our group found it refreshing to talk critically about keyboarding and its place in education, and maybe busting a few myths about its overall importance.

Peter Ross (I did not take notes on a keyboard)

PS - Please contribute your thoughts. I’d love to hear them.