Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Future of Keyboarding Instruction

I\'ve been teaching elementary students proper keyboarding techniques for the past 9 years. This year, they don\'t get it. I had to ask myself, "Am I not teaching well? What\'s different?"
The answer was glaring at me...this is a tablet generation. For the first time, this year these students spend more time using tablets, iPods, or phones for communication, gaming, and research over the typical desktop or laptop students of the past.

These students don\'t use proper touch typing methods nor do they even use a typical keyboard to practice those skills. They hunt and peck on the keyboard that is built into the screens or they use a phone keyboard to navigate.
Where does that leave keyboarding instruction? I expect in the next few years we will see a shift from the normal qwerty keyboard to something that is more user friendly for the tablets. Companies are already developing thumb based keyboarding software options, not to mention that dictation based software is getting better and better at voice recognition. So the question is, when does keyboarding get dropped from the curriculum? When do the standards for WPM change? When will I be able to say that I am meeting the standards placed before me? When will this very fluid curriculum adopt a new way to adapt? Isn\'t technology exciting?

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