Sitting with my resident psychoanalyst at dinner last night, and we got to talking about the capacity of younger children to use a computer keyboard effectively.
Now, have you ever gritted your teeth as your 7 or 9 year-olds (let alone 15 year-olds) labour for ages over finding one letter at a time?
Not an issue, I said. Let’s just rush out the latest in voice recognition technology; and then they won’t have to worry about that painstaking style that requires an entire morning to print out 3 sentences.
Sharon (the psychoanalyst) gently pointed out (she always does. Gently, that is) that voices under the age of 10 are usually not consistent enough in their pitch and tone, to be able to use that voice recognition software very well.
So, for now, they need to either handwrite, or they need to learn how to type. Given the latter, here’s a program that lots of kids really like. We head across to the UK for this one; and you’ll find it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/flash/stage1.shtml
Have a go yourself. It actually got me into using more than two fingers. Impressive!
