I didn't take a typing class until I was a junior in high school. As a self-sufficient sophomore who only bothered my mother with "unsolvable" math problems, she was surprised to observe me toward the end of the year, finger-pecking my way toward the finish line of a writing assignment. This was not acceptable in her eyes, and not the way I wanted to enter the professional workforce--whether I knew it yet or not.
If you had asked me--as she quickly learned from my protests--I was actually very proud of just how fast I could type with only my two index fingers. "I bet I type faster with two fingers than most of my classmates do using all of theirs." My mother quickly defeated my straw man argument. "It doesn't matter," she said, "YOU will type faster using all of your fingers than YOU type using just two." When enrollment opened for the next semester, I was promptly signed up for a typing class.
Fast forward over 20 years and I am about to continue the cycle: I just gasped at my high school sophomore son's surprising-even-though-it-shouldn't-be inability to type using "touch typing" (the accepted term for typing using all fingers) and vowed to find a solution. Unfortunately, his high school is not providing me with an easy solution, so my search quickly hopped online. But this raised a fair question: Is typing still a fundamental skill? In the age of Artificial Intelligence and speech recognition, is touch typing actually beneficial? I think that it is, at least for now. At the end of the day, touch typing is still faster. Can most people touch type faster than they can talk? Of course not. However, the realities of speech recognition text generation include substantial editing. Our worlds are noisy and filled with other voices too. Our thoughts are disjointed and the words we want to create on a page are rarely available to proceed from our lips unedited. I re-wrote portions of that last sentence (and already this one!) numerous times. Making those changes and corrections using touch typing was quick--faster than I could have even explained it to an AI agent. And much faster than the process of speech-to-text (to hold-to-select, to delete, to position, to new speech-to-select, to repeat...). Yes, touch typing is (still) a modern fundamental skill. From writing code to writing prose, our current and future students would be benefited by having touch typing as an early goal in their educational path.
So we're back online and looking for typing programs and--whoa! There are a lot of options nowadays. But take heart because at the end of the day, this is a good thing. There are lots of different methods and approaches, but most programs out there will get you (or your child) to the goal of touch typing. But in case you'd like my recommendation, here it is:
While there is a significant difference between the student and instructors/admin accounts, one of the great things about Typing.com is just how simple it is to create a student account. Instructors and admin are easily able to see the learning experience for themselves and gain both a familiarity and comfort with the website and program from the perspective of their students (and possibly add a few words per minute to their own typing pace while they're at it!). On the opposite side of the coin, the options for instructors and administrators are varied enough to establish a far reaching network that covers both administrators in charge of multiple teachers, and teachers in charge of multiple classes of students. There is even an option for parents of homeschoolers! For current teachers, Typing.com has established seamless integration with web-based learning management systems such as Google Classroom, Class link, Clever, and Microsoft.
Once inside the teacher dashboard is comprehensive and informative of students' progress. In my example at left, I don't have any of my students' private data displayed, but you can see it provides a great overview of the class. At the same time, individual students can be selected and examined for very extensive progress information. Without a doubt, Typing.com is a useful tool for schools, school districts, and homeschools facing budget constraints that have put touch typing classes on the chopping block. My personal key takeaway and idea for classroom implementation with adult learners is to never skip the fundamentals and to never assume the starting point. Typing.com isn't just for the young. Statistics are varied, but the majority of reported statistics reports less than 35% of adults in the USA can touch type fluently. But this lesson applies across all disciplines, resources, and tools of EdTech!
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