Keyboarding Tips for Administrators

Keyboarding is a basic literacy skill!   It ranks with reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking.   In Phase 1 of learning literacy, students discover the nature of the task. Phase 2 consists of student improvement through repetition. In Phase 3 students increase in response stability, accuracy, and spontaneity of responses.

The learning phases of keyboaroding skill, like literacy must be:

•  Automatic (see then do).
•  Based on instant letter and word recognition.
•  Developed through appropriate and purposeful practice.
•  Taught best through direct instruction.

A successful keyboarding program depends primarily on administrative support. Schedule time each year for students in grades 3 through 6 for keyboarding instruction and provide training for teachers and staff to know how to successfully teach keyboarding.

"People who used to find the 'hunt and peck' method of keyboarding sufficient realize that it does't make much sense to have a computer with lightening speed if the information inputte in the machine trickles in like molasses in January." Sandberg, Diment 1984

"Keyboarding is a cumulative skill--what can be effectively leaned at one level depends heavily upon what has been learned earlier. If hunt 'n peck habits become ingrained, it becomes much more difficult to develop a competent keyboarding skil. You need that basic foundation early on." Deseret News, April 1999

Slideshow Presentations (created in Microsoft Powerpoint for training purposes)

•  Proper Keyboarding Techniques ppt
•  Keyboarding -- A Basic Literacy Skill ppt
•  Elementary Keyboarding Quotes ppt
•  Keyboarding Methodology ppt

Classroom Management

•  Provide keyboard covers in the computer labs to break the bad habit of allowing students to look at their hands when they type.
•  Use some type of incentive to reinforce good behavior.
•  Purchase or create large keyboard charts for classroom teachers to display and use in their classrooms.  Some classroom teachers put up a blank keyboarding and then fill in the keys as their class learns them in the computer lab