Kindergarten Keyboarding

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 11/1/2005

With computers now de rigueur for schools, it’s critical for students to know how to use a keyboard. At issue, though, is when that instruction should take place.

“Students encounter technology from kindergarten on,” says Susan Arthur, a curriculum coordinator at Missoula County Public School (MCPS), which is reevaluating when and how they teach keyboarding this year. “Do we want them to hunt and peck and teach them later?” she asks. Or does teaching them too early impede the critical development of eye-hand coordination, as some experts suggest.

For many adults, a typewriter was the first opportunity to submit a paper that wasn’t handwritten—and typing classes usually weren’t offered until high school, well after a student had mastered handwriting. However, some studies have shown that students who use computers to write submit better crafted papers. A computer makes revision easier, and for someone who knows how to type properly—and quickly—writing a paper on a computer can help them get words down almost as fast as their thoughts.

“But that’s only going to happen if you’re also teaching good writing skills,” says Curt Dudley-Marling, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English’s Elementary Section Steering Committee and a professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. “It’s not magic. Technology does not turn bad writers into good writers.”

MCPS currently offers keyboarding to its sixth graders, and is now considering offering the curriculum to students in lower grades. One concern, mentions Arthur, is if a student is in kindergarten or first grade, special adapted keyboards may have to be purchased for their little hands.

But Dudley-Marling warns that hardware itself is not going to be the answer—and that poor keyboarding skills, or lack of access to enough computers to practice, can actually make it harder for a student.

“Research has shown that if they don’t have proper instruction, they hunt and peck and end up writing slowly,” says Dudley-Marling. “In that case, the keyboard can get in their way.”