History teachers make the students take notes, and look at slides, English teachers make the students read a book, mathematics teachers have the students come to the board and solve problems, and to some people those ways may not be effective or interesting. With the 7th grade keyboarding class, Mrs. Oberlin has a way different style of teaching.
Learning to type may be the most annoying thing in the world, but with some games o
n the Internet and the software it may not be. “One thing I do is a laminated oval track that keeps track of the timed portion of the lesson. There are laminated street rods that kids can choose from to race around the track,” said Mrs. Oberlin. She also uses typing games as a way to teach keyboarding. The Internet is always helpful for games. “On the Internet there are countless games and activities, but there is one specific that I choose from that I think will help and entertain at the same time, called Typershark,” commented Mrs. Oberlin. With some classes there are far more advanced kids that can type fast and there are some that can’t type fast. One of the websites that help specific areas in their typing exercises is freetypinggame.net. On this website they concentrate on specific keys like the home row (asdf, jkl;), the top row and the bottom row.Most of the students really like the games. “The keyboarding games are fun because it’s not something that you are going to be graded on. It’s something that you can try to go fast on them and if you mess up it doesn’t matter as long as you tried,” said Bianca Wright. The keyboarding games have helped one student improve “by making me go faster and challenging me not to make mistakes,” said Chance King. To the kids the games are far more interesting than the everyday assignments. “The games give you a break from having to make sure you’re getting an A on an assignment, and they help you type better,” said Syndey Patterson.
Overall, these typing games get the kids away from the monotony of every day typing and help Mrs. Oberlin be a more effective keyboarding teacher. Next time you are surfing the net or just messing around and feel like seeing how good of a typist you are, check out these online games and see how fun they are.
