The Best Online Programs for Teaching Kids to Print
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Oh, sorry, my nine month old hasn’t mastered the keyboard yet, but I allow him to indulge his love of button presses early on because typing skills are more important than ever. 97% of classrooms have computers, and 96% of American workers use “new communication technologies” in their daily lives.
Hence, it is important for children to develop good typing skills early. Today’s generation may never get to know legendary type teacher Mavis Beacon (who turns out to be FRAUD ), but fortunately, parents have access to many online typing tools to help their aspiring stenographers learn to fully control keystrokes. …
Here’s a rundown of our favorite programs:
Newbie
Novice typists should start with hand placement, key recognition, and correct shape, so this helps them find programs with good visual demonstrations that follow in real time.
Benefits: Many sites and apps have entertaining text input, but QwertyTown stands out for its face-to-face combat, incremental features, and social rewards. Users create their own avatar and participate in a single player or league-style game that integrates better with how kids use technology and also offers competitive incentives for improvement.
Disadvantages: The QwertyTown software is ideal for use in classrooms (which also has a built-in user community), which limits its appeal for home use. They offer a 30-day free trial, but after that you have to pay.
Benefits: Typing Club gets high marks for helpful video tutorials (thankfully skippable for replays), fun animations and renderings (like a ninja throwing a horrible snowman with various objects) and great performance factoids (I can type Moby Dick in the shadows more than 30 hours … catch up, suckers). It’s also free without registration.
Disadvantages: The site design seems a bit dated and cluttered with ad slots (users can turn off ads by signing up for a premium profile). While Pumpkin Ninja is fun, it would be nice to see more variety in the free gameplay. Plus, it’s very trivial, but the Typing Club name won’t make your child feel super cool (like learning to type in general).
Benefits: The BBC doesn’t just put out funny TV programs. Their Dance Mat Typing software allows young users to start at the “home row” and type through four vibrant three-step levels. “Graduates” can also choose from a wide range of games and typing test at the branch KidzType (do not pay attention to this unfortunate typo). The entire program fits perfectly into their broader primary computing center , offering a natural transition to more complex digital lessons.
Disadvantages: The games are based on Flash, which is inconvenient for those using new devices (although, perhaps, this is just a touch of dry British irony). The lack of a social feature built into the software designed for kids in 2017 also looks immaculately retro.
More advanced
Once your child has the basics, they will want to work on improving their speech-per-minute rate and minimizing errors.
Benefits: Ratatype is specially designed to improve your typing accuracy and speed. Users cannot just beat the levels, as even three minor typos lead to replay. Unless your child breaks the keyboard out of frustration, they are sure to have the nimblest, most accurate fingers on Twitter.
Disadvantages: It makes sense that a more advanced typing program would ditch childish animation and variety of gameplay, but Ratatype’s lessons and tests seem somewhat clinical, which doesn’t inspire much repetition.
Benefits: Key Hero is convenient for users who want to track their progress as they offer robust statistics for tracking personal progress along with community percentile placement. Another huge plus: They use difficult passages from persuasive literature in their tests (for example, V stands for Vendetta, The Man Who Laughs ), a refreshing break from paragraphs in other programs that often seem out of touch with standard reading tests.
Disadvantages: Key Hero offers even less frills than Ratatype, with a single faint pulse of joy in highlighting text (hard to enjoy when you’re trying to type them so quickly) and graphs that are trending favorably. The site design is also pretty heavy ( sigh ).
Pluses: Finally, some fun. TypeRacer puts global users in competition to type a piece of text the fastest (all errors must be corrected before the end). VW Beetles move around the screen in real time, encouraging hyper focus during the photo finish. It’s funny that the lyrics are taken not only from literature, but also from lyrics and quotes from TV shows / movies.
Disadvantages: As interesting as the competitive vantage point is, stationary VW Beetles sliding along dotted lines are a little more fun than watching a progress bar. Again, expect a bit of an immersive mid-range typing experience, but a little more themed pizaz would be nice.
These are our favorites on the web, but there are many other options as well, some of which install software if you prefer a program that’s separate from the distractions of the internet.
Now, if you don’t mind, my nine month old needs to get back to work.
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