Do you use the “Christopher Columbus Method” of typing? That’s the “find your key and land on it” method. The Ohio Department of Education says you should learn to touch-type in third grade (check the bottom of page 90).
I learned to type in graduate school. You are probably guessing that I didn’t take Typing 501. You’re right. I was trying to communicate with people via the computer. One day I realized that I was wasting a lot of time “looking” at the keys and then looking up to see my mistakes.
This was long before the days of Mavis Beacon, or at least my knowledge of typing software. Besides, I was a graduate student. That translates into “poor” and there wasn’t a lot of open source free software to use either.
One day I decided I was no longer going to look at the keys. That lasted about a minute. Fortunately I had an IBM keyboard with removable keys. I took them all off and rearranged them. Looking at the keys no longer helped. That’s when I learned to touch-type.
Today, I can type about 35 words a minute. That isn’t bad for an old guy that never took a formal typing class. Now my eyes are free to watch for those misspelled words. Unfortunately, learning to type did not improve my spelling.
TSPY=42.0
I learned to type by chatting. Back in the mid 1990’s, you would post in a webpage and keep refreshing the page for new posts. Although I do not use the proper technique, I do get the job done and do not look at the keys. My wife, who is a very good typist, looks at me and shakes her head! I feel it is very important for students to learn to type at an early age. Voice recognition and handwriting recognition have not been able to replace the keyboard. I am trying to use the keyboard more and spend less time with the mouse. I use Quicksilver on the Mac and Launchy on Windows. I don’t know if I am up to 35 words per minute. I may someday.