A Glaring Omission in Education — Touch Typing
One of the first aspects of a child’s education is to learn to write. Writing skills progress over the years to the proud moment of getting a pen licence. Handwriting is an amazing and vital life skill with a valuable and proven contribution to the development of fine motor skills. It is the flip-side of reading, a structured, universal method of communication, giving the individual to be part of society with the ability to convey and receive messages..
Typing, however, is a skill that is rarely taught to children. In today’s tech-centric world, this is a glaring omission of our school curriculum. Let’s think forward ten to fifteen years into the future. How much of a person’s written communication will be handwritten vs typed? Rather than teaching what is required in students’ future lives, the education system is stagnant or at least running very behind in ensuring that children are taught efficient, practical and vital skills for their lives ahead.
Typing represents a significant portion of a child’s future communication. As such it could be argued essential that they are equipped for this in their early years. Touch typing isn’t magic, it isn’t just for the tech nerds, in fact it isn’t even hard. It can be learned in many cases in a single term or semester.
NAPLAN Online — An imminent disaster?
NAPLAN has already begun to launch online. Of course, this change is not only inevitable but makes absolute sense as we transition into the new electronic world. Kudos to the education system for somewhat keeping pace. Finally twenty years after the surge in mainstream uptake of the Internet, students will be evaluated using real world appropriate methods. However, and alarmingly, the shortfall in touch typing skills will prove to skew results in many ways.
The NAPLAN website emphasises that the paper and online tests will assess the same criteria, but misses the point that students will have widely varied levels of skill in the simple act of completing the test. Where handwriting skills are practiced on a daily basis in classrooms and preschools from an early age, the skill of touch typing does not get actively practiced in most classrooms and is not skill equally shared by all. By the time students complete their first NAPLAN test, some will not yet have been shown the correct hand position for touch typing, let alone had the time and instruction to ensure that they are efficient in this skill.
So how does this affect NAPLAN results? The test is a timed examination, which means that only so much output, or answers, can be given by the student. Regardless of how much knowledge the student has, if they do not possess the typing skills to complete their test efficiently, they may fall short of actually being able to deliver their answers. Let’s look at this in action.
Case Study: Kaleb, 12 years old (Year 6)
Kaleb has had some exposure to computers and keyboards, however he mainly engages with touchscreen devices. Kaleb was asked to type a short paragraph during which his speed and accuracy was recorded. The results concluded a speed of 7 WPM with 86% accuracy. He described the experience as ‘frustrating’ and mentioned that finding the letters was his greatest struggle.
The NAPLAN writing section has a 40 minute time limit which includes planning, composing, editing and proofreading. Based on a 30 minute period spent composing, here is the output based on the speed of Kaleb from the case study to a child able to type at just half the average casual typing speed.
This clearly highlights that students who can touch type are much more likely to perform at a higher level than students who cannot.
Typing is a fundamental skill, a small beginning step towards digital literacy, and an important part of STEM education. Communication is the cornerstone of our society’s success and advancement.. Handwriting will always have an important place in student learning but we must also actively equip students with typing skills for their technology-rich futures.
A Consideration of Implementation
Like all aspects of education there are nuances to identifying when tools should be used and the tasks they are used for. Research indicates that typing may not be the best tool for all transcription(1). Typing is a complementary tool and should be used appropriately. It should not be used to supplant writing, but in addition to it.
Some schools across Australia are leading the proactive charge for change and are not waiting until signs of failure appear. We are happy to be working with many hundreds of schools across the country, helping to equip students with digital literacy. But it’s now we need to extend that and equip students with a Digital ABILITY.
We encourage all schools, teachers and principals to reach out and discuss solutions. Typing is easily taught via a structured program with the use of efficient, accessible tools.
(1) http://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/ink-on-paper-some-notes-on-note-taking.html
Frank Lucisano is the founder of ScopeIT Education (www.scopeITeducation.edu.au), one of the world’s leading IT education organisations, teaching 14,000 students every week across Australia and South East Asia. They specialise in ensuring students are equipped with the necessary skills to further their education and employment prospects. ScopeIT Education now offers Touch Typing as one of its in-school lessons.
