| Keyboarding remains a skill, and like all skills, it requires practice.
While drill practice from text is still the beginner's method of
choice, the ultimate goal is for a student to be able to compose
at the keyboard, expending the majority of their brainpower on creativity
rather than process. If keyboarding is learned well and properly,
it becomes second nature. When someone who knows how to keyboard
composes, their thoughts are not interrupted with locating missing
letters on the keyboard. Their thoughts are consumed with the writing
process.
Keyboarding is a component
of our 6th grade computer cycle. At this point, students are given
the basic tools to learn how to keyboard properly. Many students
will not acquire lifelong keyboarding proficiency in a short term
course unless the practice is continued and reinforced over a period
of time, especially if the skill is not taken seriously and the
student does not elect to continually apply correct keyboarding
techniques.
Students do not have to spend hours a day
to improve their keyboarding skills. In fact, 15-20 minutes of practice
at least twice a week will work wonders! Parents can help by reinforcing the
importance of using correct keyboarding techniques for all computer
related tasks – word processing, programming, etc.
REFERENCE: http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr076.shtml |
