Ask HN: How are you teaching your kids to type?

4 points by mcraenich 2 years ago | 2 comments

I've got a few young boys, definitely too young for this at the moment, but I'm hoping to ensure that they become proficient typists at the right time.

When I was younger our elementary school used a combination of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, and forcing us to not look at our hands, but I'm not confident that all schools now take this skill as seriously as they should.

Has anyone tried to teach their kids themselves? How did you do it?

eimrine 2 years ago |

I am mentoring a 10yo student who desires to learn a computer science. I promised to borrow him a laptop for the sake of learning CS if he unlocks the password "abcd...z" without looking at the keyboard. Beforehand I demonstrated him my skill of touchtyping a full set of symbols using Dvorak in some keyboard training software, that inspired him because he believes he is going to type a lot of code. That ended up in acquiring a touchtyping skill in 6 hours of pure work divided in 4 sessions. The funny part is that English letters are not even a part of our mother language. The student confirmed that he feels a superiority of Dvorak layout as I do, despite of regularly using qwerty on a phone. Now he can to type in English significantly faster than to write on a paper which is not very good in my opinion (I could write faster in his age) but this skill and the laptop allows him to pass more hands-on tutorials than it was possible before my help.

WallyFunk 2 years ago |

Teach them the value of the little divets on the F and J keys which touch typists use to get a handle on where other keys are at.