Educational Technology Core 3 rd – 5 th Grade Band

1. Educational Technology Core • 3rd – 5th Grade Band “It is recommended that in addition to the standards and performance indicators, keyboarding first be taught as a concentrated unit in 3rd Grade and reviewed in each succeeding grade to allow students to achieve a high degree of proficiency (See Appendix B).”

2. Educational Technology Core • 3rd – 5th Grade Assessment “…Students will be assessed during the spring of their 5th Grade year. The assessment will include a keyboarding skill test, a technology literacy self-assessment, and the inclusion of at least two pieces of student work in an electronic portfolio.”

3. Important Fact Keyboarding is a cumulative skill – what can be effectively learned at one level depends heavily upon what has been learned earlier. If hunt ‘n peck habits become ingrained, it becomes much more difficult to develop a competent keyboarding skill. You need that basic foundation early on. Desert News, April 5, 1999

4. Important Fact People who used to find “hunt and peck” keyboarding sufficient realize that it doesn’t make much sense to have a computer with lightning speed if the information inputted into the machine trickles in like molasses in January. Sandberg-Diment, 1984

5. Important Fact You would not sit a child down at a piano and use a software package to teach piano playing. Similarly, children are taught to play sports with a coach and much guided practice. The coach provides motivation, reinforcement, and corrective action.

6. Important Fact The complexity of teaching keyboarding requires an extensive and extremely well-written software program. No software program has been shown to be superior to capable, live keyboarding instruction. Who Should Teach Keyboarding and When Should it Be Taught, Margaret J. Erthal, Business Education Forum, Oct. 1998

7. Important Fact While most kids and adults can learn to hunt and peck on their own, real typing speed depends on PROPER TECHNIQUE. Michael J. Himowitz, Baltimore Sun

8. Important Fact From the findings of skill-learning research and studies of time and motion in human performance, technique or form has come to be considered a prerequisite to skilled performance of motor tasks. Typewriting: Learning and Instruction

9. Important Fact In learning any psychomotor skill, an essential component of the learning process is an active teacher who observes and evaluates the process of learning and provides feedback in the form of correctives (comments and demonstrations) to help the learner improve. Typewriting: Learning and Instruction

10. Important Fact Demonstration is perhaps the most important single method of providing instruction in keyboarding…”An ounce of showing is worth a pound of discussing” and “A gram of demonstration is worth a kilogram of discovery”… for trial-and-error methods are uneconomical and inefficient in complex skill learning. Typewriting: Learning and Instruction

11. Important Fact Keyboarding facilitates skill development in writing, spelling and grammar… Students who can keyboard are not only faster but also more imaginative. They are free to think about composing text or copying material rather than constantly trying to find their place.

12. Keyboarding Collaboration Coming together is a BEGINNING... Keeping together is PROGRESS…

13. Most Important Working together is SUCCESS!