What’s in Your Inbox?
Posted by Hope Spencer on 04 Feb 2010 | Posted in: Teachers and Teaching
I remember when I got my first email account. I was so excited to open the inbox and find a message! Then I discovered that I could sign up for newsletters and coupons from my favorite companies. I really felt like I was on the cutting edge of technology. When I started receiving photo updates from faraway family and friends, well, I thought email was about the best invention ever!
But I have found a new reason to love my inbox. You see, my young nieces have signed up for their first email accounts. Now nothing makes me happier than opening my inbox to find an email from Helen or Sarah. Sometimes I receive longer notes; sometimes the notes are a bit shorter. Every once in a while, Helen will just send a corny joke. (She knows how much I love them.) Sarah, who is younger, loves to experiment with fonts and send rainbow-colored messages. Whatever the messages, I am delighted to know they are thinking of me and want to write notes to their aunt.
It makes me wonder, though. I’ve never actually watched Helen and Sarah type their messages. I don’t know whether they’re using keyboarding skills or using a hunt-and-peck method. Until I get the chance to visit them, maybe you can tell me about your students and their keyboarding styles. Do they know how to type? Are you teaching keyboarding skills in your classroom or are students figuring out their own methods? Is there a computer lab in your school where keyboarding skills are taught? I’d love to know!
Happy teaching!
Hope
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Keyboarding is an important part of our day at my school. We are slowly making the switch to one-to-one computing. Students have laptops at their desks that they using to making slideshows about adverbs and graphs about the recent medal count for the Winter Games. They love our new technology, but we made sure that keyboarding was an important part of our new curriculum. Handwriting is still important, but today’s students will need to know how to type with finesse and ease. It will be a required job skill.
My nieces and nephew are the “hunt-and-peck” children. I believe that the nieces will become the professional typist because of early experience on the keyboard and the interest of writing notes to friends and loves one. My nephew interest of keyboard skills is the arrow keys, space bar, and other main keys that will help him succeed in a computer game.
We do not have computers in my classroom. This is okay with me because I feel that my children need to learn how to socialize with each other, develop their academic skills, and fine/gross motor skills.
(I teach Pre K 3)
It is so funny that you would bring this up right now. A couple weeks ago one of the kids was trying to type a spelling word in a practice program and he was hunting and pecking. I realized that all of my students are using the computer for learning activities and none of them know the keyboard. So I found a typing instruction game and everyone spends about fifteen to twenty minutes a day using it. They already know the baseline and want to challenge me to speed tests. This week we’re working on developing good habits now, like not looking at the keyboard but keeping eyes on the monitor. We are blessed to have three computers at our disposal and we might have one more desktop soon. The hardest part is finding a place in the classroom to set them all up!
hi im mohammad from iran h ru?
i hope i can send u an email . i read ur tex it was so fony