Keyboarding
I learned to type in middle school. We played letter invaders for 45 minutes every Thursday morning. Some mornings, the teacher would cover an individuals hands with a sheet of paper and watch the game, taking note of mistakes. I hated typing. And yet, it is probably one of the only middle school skills that I use on a daily basis.
My third graders need to learn to type. Our fourth grade laptop program is amazing, but in the early part of the year, kids are frustrated by fingers that can't keep up with their ideas. Teary eyed children announce that they are sure they have recieved a defective keyboard which does not contain a letter Q. This is not the first writing on a laptop experience I want for them.
But how do I teach third graders to type in the context of our project based, strongly tied to the classroom curriculum technology program? I see these children for 45 minutes a week, and we visit web sites and create illustrations and publish their books. How can I take those things away in favor of rote typing? And in a year when children are learning cursive, how much rote practice of new forms of communication can they handle?
For now, I think we're going to start class with 10 minutes of typing in a web based program (Typing Pal for Schools). We'll encourage them to practice at home, and we'll start doing a little more typing in our projects as useful.
There is no big understanding to look for on their faces, no ah-hah moment to catch. We practice to master a skill that will help them later - like bike riding, or scales for the pianist. Sometimes though, I wonder if typing will be a skill they need as adults, or if typing will have been replaced by some other new technology.