Challenge Them to Type Faster Than They Can Write!!

How fast should your students keyboard?  It all depends.

You know that the main advantage keyboarding has over writing is that it can be FASTER (aside from looking nicer, be less fatiguing, easier to edit, and enters content into a digital medium 😉 ) .   Our districts may have identified specific speeds for students of different levels to keyboard, but what does that mean to our students?  Its a great way to assign grades, but it isn’t personal to the students.

IDEA: Have the students copy a paragraph by hand for one minute and then count the number of letters they completed. Divide by 5 and you have the WPM for them. Identify the number of errors.

Next, have them do the same thing with the same paragraph using a keyboard. Compute the WPM. Identify the number of errors.

NOW you have the gauntlet!! Now you have a way to challenge them to increase their keyboarding. They can work to beat their PB (Personal Best). Once they have conquered that, they can work to keyboard at 125% of their handwriting PB.

What do you think? Have you ever done anything like this? Sure, your district has probably identified minimum speeds for your students, but try personally motivating them using this method.

Love to hear your feedback or success stories.

Leigh

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The Typing of the Dead

Looking for ways to motivate boys to learn to keyboard?  Then you need to find The Typing of the Dead.

In this program, the player (you have to call him that because of the video game aspect of the program) is confronted with a never-ending onslaught of zombies and monsters.  Yes, you guessed it, the only way that they can fight the monsters is by typing the words quickly and accurately.

Don’t you love the keyboards that are attached to each of the heros’ chests?  It’s almost like being in Second Life.

This program is totally unique.  It is using the PacMan Theory of Motivation to get students to learn “something that’s good for ’em.”

This game was first released in 1999 in Japan for video arcades with dual keyboards. What a great way to take education to where the kids are . . .

Later, it was ported over to Dreamcast, Windows, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo. You might say that it has been received with mixed reactions. some call it “an enjoyable game.”  PC World identified it as one of the “Top Ten Worst Games”

What about you, will you be putting this game in your schools anytime soon?  Comment about this.

Research – Keyboard Research References

Keyboard Research References… research from typewriting to computers dating from the 1920’s to the mid 1990’s. Refrences by researchers, teachers, etc., about teaching keybording skills.

http://www.tifaq.com/keyboards/references.html