Kids still learn to write when they go to school, but these days, just as important now is learning to type. For me, all the way through school and university, my assignments were handwritten. During my last couple of years at Uni, I submitted a couple of pieces typed and printed on the computer - but this was still a novel thing to do, and I didn't really start using computers regularly until a few years later.
Now, however, our daughters use computers a lot at school already in their first few years, and by the time they reach grade 6, they have to have their own laptop as part of their school equipment!
In year 1, our daughter came home and told us about a great website they'd been shown on the computers at school called "Dance Mat Typing". When she showed us this site we were very impressed, and now have it in favourites on our computer, for both girls to 'play' now and again to help them learn to type!
Basically each level has a different animal who tells you where to put your fingers (there's pictures on the screen too), and then to type away doing various exercises for the particular letters in that level. The animal pops up every now and again to offer encouragement, and once you've completed that level they come out and do a song and dance to celebrate!
Our girls love it, and are becoming quite good little typers through using this website quite often.
We were so impressed with this website, we tried to pass it on to family members in New Caledonia for their kids to use. Unfortunately they have some (but not all) of the letters on their French computer keyboard in different places, so this website is no good for them! If anyone knows of a fun alternative to this Dance Mat Typing tutor that suits the French keyboard we'd love it if you could share the link with us!
Are your kids learning to type? Do you think it's important that they learn to type 'properly'? Do you type 'properly'? I learned touch typing, and am pretty fast, but still not as fast as my brother, who types in his own way, but works on computers and always has - so he's very speedy indeed! Maybe it's just a case of learning your own method of typing? Whatever works for you personally?
What do you think? Should touch typing be taught in schools alongside handwriting nowadays? Do you think that eventually the need to learn handwriting will disappear as gradually everything is done on computers?
Please note, this is not a product review! It is our genuine opinion of a website we use lots!
