I use Google Alerts to keep up to date on what’s happening in the “keyboarding” and “touch typing” world and I am continually surprised at just how many jobs, apart from the expected ones, require keyboarding skills, especially when there are still so many people around who disparage the importance of children learning “proper” keyboarding skills in elementary schools.
Check out my Jobs page, I will continue to update it..
It’s January 4, the start of a fresh new year 2012, what a wonderful feeling, the whole year ahead as I start on my journey to market an idea that could revolutionize the teaching of keyboarding in elementary schools. Up till now, I have been writing about stuff I wanted to say and, before I start to blog in earnest, I want to talk about a few more things, like the keyboarding LMIs I have come across online over the past 5 years.
LMIs (like-minded individuals) is an expression I picked up from my ex-boss, at the time, a Director of McKinsey & … Continue Reading
A fresh start, a clean slate, I can’t wait!!! Happy New Year to everyone
2011 was meant to be my year for making a million dollars, but the best-laid plans can go astray and they did. As a brand new year approaches, I am taking stock and looking at what I could do better. I really don’t have to do a lot of soul searching to come up with the answer to that one. I have been a chicken, scaredy cat and wimp.
In a nutshell, I sit in my comfortable computer chair, leaning back with my legs on the table, firing off emails. For 5 years, my chosen way of communicating with prospective purchasers … Continue Reading
I was catching up on my reading the other day when a headline caught my eye “Ten skills every student should learn” by Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor, eSchool News. I took a peek and I could hardly believe my eyes. The list read 1 Read, 2 Type . . .
eSchool News would have many, many readers in the education world and they have chosen touch typing or keyboarding as it’s called today after reading. Wowee! Does this mean School Districts are coming around to the importance of keyboarding and will now spend time looking at keyboarding outcomes being achieved in their … Continue Reading
“My child types so slowly that it takes her hours to complete homework and other assignments. What can I do? This was one of the top six questions parents asked teachers about kids and computers. Of all the questions she could have asked, this parent was concerned about keyboarding. While many educators are coming around to the importance of keyboarding instruction in elementary schools, their enthusiasm for doing this is nowhere near that of parents.
Keyboarding “cracked a mention” too in Question 1, What Basic Computer Skills Does My Child Need?”. The answer:”By first grade, students should be beginning … Continue Reading
“Many middle school students are already doing all their writing assessments online and there is talk of fourth graders doing this too, but this would be a nightmare! They still hunt and peck at this age!”
“I wish our schools would teach serious keyboarding down in the lower elementary; the sight of someone hunting and pecking with one finger makes me want to scream. My students are lovely people with many wonderful stories to tell, but they do not have the skills to make that possible. Watching them struggle to ‘get it out’ is heart-wrenching”.
“I am the technology coordinator at my … Continue Reading
The question of when keyboarding should be taught in the early grades in elementary schools has been widely debated since the early 1990s and, amazingly, many a thesis has been written on the subject, the hands of young people are too small, they do not have the eye-hand motor coordination to learn keyboarding skills earlier than around Grade 4 and they need to learn their own way the major objections. Others disagree:
The hands of young children are too small
“The issue with kids is not the typing activity specifically. It’s really no different from them learning the Suzuki method of violin or … Continue Reading
“The best thing you can do with an innovative idea is try it;
the worst thing you can do is just talk about it”
Georgie Farmer, creator of the Nail It Now keyboarding method
“If we never try new things, we’ll never find new things that work”
Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education , 2009
“Innovation” is the big buzzword in education at the moment. I too am a huge fan. Arne Duncan’s Open Innovation Portal was an inspiration; I loved the idea that anyone could contribute an idea to this web site. I did and it is currently in the Top 10 ideas (equal 5th on page 3) out of the 355 ideas submitted.
I emailed the portal: “I applaud what you are doing, it is innovative in itself and … Continue Reading
I always try to give the ideas of others a “go”, even when I don’t think the end result will be that fantastic. One time, I was on board the P and O liner, “Orcades” on the morning of Fancy Dress Night. My three cabin mates and I were “scrabbling” for ideas. Someone suggested “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”. I definitely wasn’t that keen, we wouldn’t look very glamorous, but I wasn’t going to not give it a “go”.
We draped the beige ship’s blankets over our heads (held together in appropriate places with safety pins), painted our noses black and created black … Continue Reading
The higher up the education ladder I went, the more rewarding the responses. The further down the ladder I went, the more likely I was to hit a bureaucratic ”brick wall”. Saskatchewan, Canada was typical. To my inital email on August 10, 2006, I received a lovely letter from the Minister of Learning’s Assistant “. . . We are glad to know about the game you have developed . . . . I have referred your message to the Instructional Resources Unit of Saskatchewan Learning. Staff there will arrange to have your resource evaluated, and will contact you to let you know the results.”
On September … Continue Reading
I’m back on deck, raring to get back on the marketing road, a road that sometimes seems endless and full of obstacles and I have to admit disheartening at times, but I remember my English Grandfather’s favorite saying “It’s a long road that has no turning” and I square my shoulders, hold my head up high and take another step.
I started on this road 5 years ago to market an idea that could revolutionize the teaching of keyboarding in elementary schools. The idea is totally new to schools, it solves a huge problem and it would save many hours of precious curriculum time and money, … Continue Reading
2011, the year I was going to make my million. I had been threatening this for several years, my friends’ eyes glazed over whenever I said it. After 5 years of “doing” marketing my way, sending emails, I was going to do whatever it takes to make my million, I had the product, schools need it, only marketing is standing in the way, but the greatest of plans can change in a heartbeat, mine did.
I had major surgery, everyone kept saying to me “it’s a big operation”, Yes, open heart surgery is big, I was there, but I wasn’t there and all … Continue Reading
I will never forget Monday, May 30, 2011; it started out as a fairly normal day and ended with me sleeping on a trolley in a hospital emergency department. I didn’t touch a keyboard for 3 months. I felt giddy when I bent down to put the leash on my darling Australian Terrier, Tommy, and I was lethargic and a bit breathless. I asked my excellent GP for a full checkup, which included an ECG. All fine. He, then, said “I might send you for an echo, it will show the valves of your heart”. He just might have saved my life.
On May 30, I blithely set … Continue Reading
To take advantage of the vast, free keyboarding resource at their fingertips, School Districts need to take a simple, down-to-earth approach to teaching keyboarding. In return, they would get back the hours and hours of precious curriculum time currently spent on software keyboarding instruction.
The Nail It Now keyboarding method is simple and down-to-earth. We already mentally split the keyboard into two sides, left-hand and right-hand letters, so it makes sense to learn one side at a time, much easier for children. There’s nothing more simple than one home row sentence and 5 up and down association words for each side to learn the … Continue Reading
“Even AFTER several weeks of an introduction to proper fingering technique, when they play the games that are supposed to reinforce those lessons, most children will drop everything they’ve learned about proper fingering and just revert to two-finger “pecking” to GET POINTS (or whatever quick rewards the game offers)”
Bad habits die hard. Grades 3 to 6 children spend at least a couple of years in the early grades keyboarding with two fingers while playing software “familiarization” games. Then, all of a sudden, in Grade 3, they are expected to drop this bad habit like a hot potato and learn to keyboard … Continue Reading
I want to stop children from ever typing with two fingers, I want them to be so proud of learning “proper” keyboarding, they won’t even want to.
The Nail It Now floor keyboard game teaches Grades 1-2 children the keyboard and correct finger use in four short lessons. That’s all very well and good, but it’s what School Districts do with this learning that counts. They can let it fizzle out like a damp fire cracker or they can treat it as serious learning, which it is, and make every effort to ensure students don’t forget what they’ve learned.
Kids of this age soak up … Continue Reading
Grades 1-3 children are actually learning to keyboard with two fingers, a dramatic statement but true. For 3 years, they play keyboarding software “familiarity” games the only way they know how, with two fingers. There has to be a better way. How hard would it be to adapt the Nail It Now keyboarding method for grownups to suit the needs and interests of young children? At least, it isn’t software.
First and foremost, I must bear in mind children learn best when they are having fun, when they are involved in meaningful activities and when their individual differences are taken into consideration.
OK, the keyboard, teachers tell … Continue Reading
After my “doggie friend” keyboarding survey and the poor outcome of traditional keyboarding software, I got to thinking about children. Many elementary schools have keyboarding classes as early as Grade 1. Are they using these keyboarding software programs? If so, how are children coping with the repetitive random letter typing and are schools achieving desired outcomes?
First, I googled “how young children learn best” and up came ”when they are having fun, when they are involved in meaningful activities and when their individual differences are taken into consideration”. Mm, well, repetitive random letter typing is not fun, it could never be described as meaningful and one size … Continue Reading
If you want to make your friends squirm, ask them one simple and straightforward question “can you keyboard using all your fingers?”
I was curious about the success rate of traditional software keyboarding methods that use repetitive random letter typing, I couldn’t find anything online, I decided to conduct my own survey among my doggie friends. I took Tommy, my darling Australian Terrier, for a walk and asked the first ten “doggie friends” I met: “Can you keyboard using all your fingers? I was amazed that the only person who gave me a straight answer was the one who could actually touch type; she simply … Continue Reading
How many keyboarding software users, bored and frustrated with repetitively typing random letters isolated in one program on one computer for months trying to learn, give up? When learning anything to do with computers, we are inclined to blame ourselves when things don’t work out, but the keyboarding reality is that too many people give up for this to be the case; check out my testimonials page:
“Tried other tutors in the past, but with no success”
“Having toyed around with touch typing for more years than I care to confess to . . .”
“I’ve tried Mavis Teaches Typing, but found … Continue Reading
People are passionate about cooking and dancing. They happily put in long hours and overcome many difficulties, even pain. No-one I know is passionate about keyboarding. It doesn’t excite taste buds or tug at heart strings. It’s an increasingly important skill to have, but people just want to get the learning of it over and done with and get on with their busy lives.
It’s surprising then that fast and easy are not the priorities of keyboarding software companies; “bells and whistles” and adding more and more lessons gets way more attention. Repetitively typing random letters, learning only 2-4 keys per lesson, 100 lessons: it’s not fast and it’s not … Continue Reading
The click, clack of typewriters in my typewriter class has been replaced by noisy rock and roll characters with Irish voices, the colorful adventures of a koala, the animated story of a time machine, bells and whistles galore when you learn to keyboard using software these days. And there’s more, instead of the ping and clang of carriage returns, the end of a line now activates windshield wipers, a chameleon’s tongue, a large man lifting weights above his head.
How do I know all this? I trialed 9 competitor keyboarding methods, all software, to work out the unique selling points (USP) of my keyboarding method compared … Continue Reading
I felt my keyboarding method was pretty unique. My students were saying things like “Wow, this is so fast and easy”. Why don’t you sell it? But how? I am a hopeless salesperson. I buy whole books of raffle tickets at a time, rather than sell even one ticket.
Then, I had an idea. Why not create a web site? The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of popping my products (by this time, I had also created a Microsoft Word tutorial) on a web site and then, sitting back while they sold themselves. Easy. Ha. … Continue Reading
“Use it or lose it” my feisty old aunt used to say as she marched around the park every day on her ancient legs. She was exercising her leg muscles, keyboarding exercises muscle-memory, which has nothing to do with leg muscles or any other kind of muscle. Keyboarding over and over literally hard-wires the brain with a simple, efficient circuitry that enables the activity and, eventually, you do it automatically, without thinking about it. Whey hey!
I learned keyboarding at school and got a job as a junior stenographer in a bank, I ran errands, I took shorthand and I used the keyboard, … Continue Reading
When I was learning to swim, pretty soon, I could dog paddle. My feet were off the ground and I was moving through the water. “Wow, I can do this”. I felt excited, confident and eager to learn more. I swaggered all the way home. My neighbor, Alice, badly needed a “Wow, I can do this” moment right now. She had been trying to learn keyboarding for 5 weeks and hadn’t even typed G.
I learned to type in typewriter class at school, typing random letters over and over, so that was no help. I thought hard. Every time we use the keyboard, … Continue Reading
“Temp” work was fun, but I still wanted to work for myself. I gave the matter a great deal of thought. Life today is full of change. There are no guarantees. I decided that, if I was going to work for myself, more than one stream of income was essential. Then, if one stream was slow, it didn’t matter. No stress.
I own a large double-story house. Why not take in lodgers? Just for fun, I picked up the phone and placed an ad in a Melbourne newspaper and, then, thought no more about it. A couple of days later, the phone … Continue Reading
I had to learn W4W. Group computer classes didn’t work for me. At one, I got left behind – simply because I didn’t grasp one little point and wasn’t brave enough to admit that I, apparently, was the only one who hadn’t “got it”. At another, I actually knew more than others and felt frustrated listening to stuff I already knew. One-on-one training would be better, but too expensive.
My computer-whiz niece offered to help. She sat in my computer chair, took control of my mouse and went zap, zap, zap. All kinds of things appeared and disappeared on the screen … Continue Reading
“I don’t want to work for this mediocre company any longer”, my parting words when I walked out on a well-paid job after 11 years. It was Friday, Secretaries’ Day and the most dramatic thing I have ever done in my life.
The next morning, listening to the birds in the park opposite, I thought I too am as free as a bird; well, as free as you can be when you have a huge mortgage. Who cares? I felt excited. I truly believed I could do anything I wanted if I gave ideas a “go”; doing this led to some amazing … Continue Reading
The last winter of our travels, we sailed from Southampton to Florida on the “Chusan”, another huge white P and O ship, to escape winter in the UK. We disembarked in Miami, but didn’t really like it. I suspect it was how we originally felt about London repeating itself.
This was when we had our most foolhardy idea yet, to re-embark on the “Chusan” and disembark at the next port of call, wherever that was, we didn’t care. It turned out to be Acapulco in Mexico. We loved travelling on big ocean liners, the people we met, the life on board and, … Continue Reading
I have always wanted to go to the Middle East. I still have the brochures I collected years ago for Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, pretty tattered now. I didn’t know then that one idea and one phone call would be all it would take to go on a trip most young travellers could only dream about.
After our traditional trip to Europe, we decided, at last, to give London a “go”; we found a flat in Lancaster Gate, next to Marble Arch on the Central Line, and started work at Victoria House in the Strand; we live in the state of … Continue Reading
Throughout our 3 years of travelling, Helen and I kept giving our ideas a “go. After our summer working in Cornwall, why not work in a winter resort? A new ski center was opening in the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland and we wrote straightaway. They asked us to arrive at the Aviemore Ski Center in a month’s time.
One month to fill in. No way were we going back to London and the strict Helena Club. We found an old newspaper clipping advertising an apple-picking job at Tullens Toat Apple Orchard in Pulborough in West Sussex. The ad was a month old, but we rang anyway. … Continue Reading
I first discovered the delights of giving ideas a “go” while overseas on a working holiday with my twin sister, Helen. In our early twenties, we set sail for England aboard the P and O liner ”Orcades”. Standing on the deck of this huge white ship on a grey, drizzly day, we watched the colorful umbrella of our parents on the pier grow smaller and smaller. We would not return for 3 years.
After a wonderous voyage, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and visiting fascinating places like Durban, Capetown and the Canary Islands, we arrived in London. We stayed at the Helena Club in Lancaster Gate, … Continue Reading