Learning to Type

I personally learned to correctly type because I had too many free periods in high school so I loaded up on as many "flex" classes as they would allow. I was pretty quick on two fingers but hit the stratosphere once I could use all ten fingers! We had a discussion today on preparing technologically-savvy students, and most of our group had learned to type, but with the emphasis on testing and reading/'riting/'rithmetic most vocational courses have been abandoned. If you ever have time with your students or want a light lesson day, consider letting them learn a bit of keyboarding: it will always pay off in their futures. To this end I have compiled a few sites that I consider to be great for K-8:

1. Dance Mat Typing from the BBC (use Internet Explorer!)
   very easy typing tutorial
   static but detailed tutorial
   
2. Typing games to make it more fun to practice keyboarding
   Animated tutorial with short sentences to practice typing
   Bubbles help you find letters on the keyboard
   Tetris-like game - you type the dropping letters to win
   
3. Typing Test to find your typing speed (wpm or words per minute) after you know the keyboard with all 10 fingers