QWERTY Creativity Killer
Emerging typist’s terror.
The keyboard. An avenue of expression. A portal for productivity. A conduit of creativity. This array of buttons has produced more for our planet than any other tool in history.
The keyboard.
Some consider it an aging relic from technology past. An archaic way to write, research, and interact with the world. Really?! I’d argue it’s more important now than ever before — and yet… those characters, on those buttons, prevent so many great ideas from becoming reality when appropriateness is an oversight.
The keyboard. It was designed in the latter half of the 1800s as a way to more efficiently create tangible written words. It has been refined in the century-and-a-half that followed to adjust to the ever-changing needs of its users. There are countless variants on the arrangement, necessary characters, size, and orientation. The keyboard has morphed to better meet our needs.
But has it for everyone?
Learning to type properly is still an important life skill. It’s one that takes years of time and practice to evolve and refine. Proper form and technique must be purposefully established or bad habits will prevail. As we grow, our abilities grow and we are able to perform more complex keyboarding tasks more efficiently. But, it takes time.
Creativity is something that doesn’t take time to learn. In fact, I’d argue that creativity is something that is, sadly, beaten out of us over time. It is an innate ability in our young learners. Ask a four-year-old to explain something they don’t understand. Their imagination will explode from their mouths and you will be equally entertained and enamored by what they create and share with you. Yet many adults would wrongfully claim that they are “not creative.” When and how does that change?
Hopefully, we are doing everything possible to build upon a child’s creativity. To harness that joy and wonder and direct it toward something even better. Creative writing is a way we can share our thoughts and ideas with others. Writing can also be a speed bump in the squelching of creativity.
We want our young learners to be writers. Writing is the creative-making side of traditional literacy. We consume others’ words and ideas when we read, but we create and share our own ideas when we write. Shouldn’t we pave the way for our students to share their thoughts and ideas in the least restrictive, learner-appropriate, environment?
The keyboard can be the dagger.
Placing a young learner in front of a complex tool and expecting them to take their ideas, even their hand-written ideas, and transpose them to digital characters on a screen can be a killer of creativity. It is a wall. It will stop many in their tracks, or at very least slow them down so considerably that they question themselves and the worth of their ideas. It’s not appropriate.
I recently worked with a third grader who was struggling to share the ideas in his head. He had been asked to type up his creative writing project in the computer lab. The end goal was to print this writing (my thoughts on that will be saved for another post). Surrounded by peers that were more practiced at typing, he was discouraged and, in twenty minutes, produced only a handful of words on his screen.
Pulling him aside, I asked about his ideas — to explain what he wanted to say in this project. Immediately he took me on a journey through his imagination. He was excited and eager to share. It was clear that the keyboard was preventing his creativity from blossoming.
We grabbed an iPad and proceeded to a quiet corner of the learning space. We launched a safe, age-appropriate writing app and I demonstrated the speech-to-text tool built into the device. The boy’s eyes grew and began to tear up as he saw the words he was speaking appear instantly on the screen. We learned a few punctuation tips and I let him share his ideas independently. Five minutes later, this boy had shared his creative writing in explicit detail. He was proud. He was engaged. He was empowered.
At our schools, we teach keyboarding. Our learners take a targeted approach to build their typing skills and that begins at the age-appropriate time of third grade. The program starts with posture, home row positioning, and basic keystrokes for each finger. Then it grows to challenge them with sentences and then stories. We focus on accuracy over speed.
It is unreasonable to expect an entry-level keyboarder to type a multi-paragraph essay in an efficient way. Using readily-available tools, like voice-to-text, is not cheating. It’s utilizing a resource to empower a learner to release their creativity — that’s our job.
Let’s focus on the spirit of the writing activity. They typing will come. The creativity must not wane.
