Students Learn To Type Early

Ayla Vick sits at a desktop computer with her hands on the keyboard. She places her fingers on the home row, stretching them to form words on the screen. “Sometimes I have to look down,” admits the Coeur d’Alene student. This isn’t high school typing, nor is it middle school. Vick is 8 years old and in third grade at Hayden Meadows Elementary School. Twice a week, her class heads to the computer lab, where keyboarding plays a big part of the growing emphasis on technological literacy. Vick and her classmates log into Typing Master, a program that uses color-coded exercises, timed drills and games modeled after classics like Pac-Man and Tetris to reinforce keyboard basics. “You have to try to go fast,” she explained, adding that she already has typed some book reports for her teacher. “It’s going to get hard”/ Scott Maben , SR. More here . (SR photo by Kathy Plonka: Tristan Wamsley, 8, typing at Hayden Meadows Elementary)

Question: When did you learn to type?