The Keyboard, The Toolbelt, The Future

Keyboarding. Should it be taught in schools? From what age? How?

This is a common debate, and one which recently exploded on a favourite list-serve. It has actually been quite a week for list-serve debates: Keyboarding among British technology and education researchers, and literacy software on two different US government-sponsored list-serves (that's another post, at least equally important, coming soon).

These kind of debates, I have found, are often not really about "education," and - if we were really to look below the surface - the stories of student success or failure which around which the posts are typically built - we would find that they are not really about "the students" either. What they are really about is a struggle over a philosophical vision of the world, and the future.

Is the world essentially "right" right now? The design correct but the implementation flawed? If you believe that then you are out seeking "best practices," the silver bullet solution to the problem. You want technology in service of doing things "the old way, but better."

In this case, you are trying to determine the optimum moment to begin instruction in the QWERTY keyboard, or debating whether it is important for students to learn that keyboard without looking at it or with, or figuring out which is the best typing trainer software. You know, as many commenters on that list said, that 'the QWERTY keyboard isn't going away anytime soon.' That 'all other systems are less efficient.' That 'failing to teach the QWERTY keyboard will leave students helpless.'

But if you believe that the world really isn't perfected in design yet, you might wonder why anyone is still committed to a bizarre text-input system designed to slow 'typists' on first generation manual typewriters, so that mechanical keys would not jam. More than that, you might say, "is this really the best way to record text?" Or, if you're a crazy post-modernist like myself, you might even ask, "should we ever really try to determine a best way to record text? Because, you know, we're dealing with humans here, and human capabilities and preferences tend to vary widely."

In which case you might be interested in figuring out how students might find what their own preferences are.

With that, I wanted to share a couple of parts of the conversation: Not from those arguing 'the other side' - that's violating list-serve confidences, but from Graham Brown-Martin of Handheld Learning and myself.

- Ira Socol

Ira Socol: Sorry, but I really cannot see that the value of [teaching] 'touch typing' is worth the effort.

Touch typing was developed as a secretarial skill, the purpose being the copying of words from handwritten documents or forms, or from shorthand. This the need to `not look' at the keyboard.

We really shouldn't be in the business of training our students for this mid 20th century business task.

This differs from the need to help students develop a suite of effective text entry skills, from speech recognition dictation to mobile keyboarding to choosing the best computer keyboard or keypad, whether qwerty, dvorak, ABC, or phone style, etc.

In fact, in today's world of varied keyboards, differing even nation to nation, teaching touch typing may actually be destructive. Just watch touch typist Americans struggling with a British keyboard, much less a French one.

Just what I observe, of course.

Ira Socol: [responding to the assertion that students must learn QWERTY to wite their exams] This is always the problem in education - we create testing which insists on a skill set - which makes that skill set then essential. And we them mistake this for some sort of "natural order."

So yes, students who learn to type on QWERTY keyboards do better typing on QWERTY keyboards, just as students who learned Spencerian Script did better writing in Spencerian Script and students who do better reading ink-on-paper do better reading ink-on-paper.

You can bemoan the inequality of some having computers at home and others not. But do households have more computers or more mobiles? And if there are more mobiles, then might we not eliminate the inequalities you describe by insisting on that as the school text-entry method (simply set up Dkey or Tapir free on your computers)?

In other words, if we can not offer choice, should we not shift to the most ubiquitous text-entry system, which today, from teen texters to the US president, is a mobile keypad?

It is not that I am insensitive to your position as a teacher trapped within an antiquated system of technologies. I am. But as researchers I believe we have an obligation to pursue truly meaningful change, and not be content with minor fixes which simply improve student compliance.

Ira Socol: I want to urge people not to get caught in a false "either/or" debate regarding keyboarding.

It is not a question - at this point in technological history - of "touch typing" vs. "no ability to quickly capture thoughts or communicate." Rather, the question is, "how do we best prepare students, based on their individual abilities and preferences, to bring their thoughts to recorded forms that others can access."

After all, in the course of any given work day I will (a) keyboard on the straight keyboard of my laptop, (b) keyboard on the ergonomic keyboard of my desktop, (c) keyboard on the '2-letters-to-a-key" keyboard of my Blackberry, (d) dictate via Vista's speech recognition, (e) dictate into my phone via Vlingo and Dial2Do - sometimes directly - other times through the Sync system in my car.

For the best jobs of today - and probably all the jobs of tomorrow - this diversity of text-entry is the norm. None of these systems were designed - or are marketed - as SEN solutions - every one was developed as a business solution.

In addition, I can keyboard on a traditional QWERTY keyboard, or on an ABC keyboard or on a Dvorak Keyboard, or even on a Cre8txt keypad - - or, for that matter, on an on-screen keyboard (such as the free Click-n-Type, or keypad styles such as Dkey and Tapir) or a fully custom designed keyboard ("blank" programmable keyboards are available).

As in everything else in education it becomes far too easy to seek a 'single solution' that we will 'apply' to all students - the industrial model of schooling we have lived with since Disraeli lived at 10 Downing Street. And in that mode of thinking, failure to "process" a child properly (teaching them touch-typing on a standard QWERTY keyboard, in this case) means that we have failed to properly transform that child and prepare them for the next processing step (be it creative writing lessons or taking the next test on the computer).

But if we are to prepare our students for the world they will live in (not the world we and our friends grew up in), we must teach them to be flexible and to find their own personal solutions that will carry them through their own lives.

Graham Brown-Martin: "Disabling the young and old" to "giving people an inequitable start in life" by not giving adequate training in the use of the QWERTY keyboard. I've read the variety of posts in this thread about the merits of teaching touch typing with a growing sense of incredulity by the many users of a research list who are still prepared to believe that we will still be interacting with computers in a 2D space with a mouse and keyboard in the next 5-10 years.

Or will this just be for the poor people whom have been designated underpowered, under-spec'd netbooks that run a flat version of the internet whilst everybody else is running the 3D thinking, speaking, listening, multi-touch and gesture recognising version?

How's that for inequity?

Well, let's bring back shorthand and dust off the Remington's shall we?

While we're about it let's teach them Cobol, Pascal, punched cards, Desktop GUI's, command line computer interfaces and "Office" software you know, like "Word" and "Powerpoint"

Let's forget about the 21st Century world in which these people are actually living in and will need to compete.

Perhaps another way of looking at this is how we're disabling teachers by not bringing them up to speed on getting in touch with how young learners actually use the technology that is embedded in their everyday lives. Perhaps teachers should be learning about building levels in Little Big Planet to teach maths and physics, guiding an evolution sim on Spore to teach evolutionary biology, editing, encoding and uploading a video to YouTube for creative media studies, creating their Facebook page and actioning their privacy settings correctly to teach citizenship.

The first "keyboard (s)" that a child uses will be a TV remote, a phone or a game console pad - the latter with incredible speed and dexterity. Many teenagers are able to send SMS messages in the dark or whilst watching TV / holding a conversation - how's that for touch-typing?

The days of the keyboard and mouse are thankfully drawing to an end, even Microsoft with their Windows 7 are recognising this. Hopefully the traditional PC/laptop will head the same way as the Remingtons and for the young learners of today will seem as quaint as a picture of a typewriter on a desk might look to us.

I won't miss them. I type at around 50 WPM and I could never type as fast as I think or speak regardless of how much training I might get. It's a low bandwidth input technology, a legacy from the typesetter, with too many possibilities for error.

Good riddance!

Graham (sent via iPhone)

The Sound of One Hand Typing

Working in the the "assistive technology" field you find yourself on some strange missions. Once, a colleague and I spent an hour searching a used office furniture warehouse, turning every office chair upside down. We were looking, as we explained to the confused staff, for a "left-handed chair."

Yes, they laughed.

But a left-handed chair is a real thing. It is a chair which can be adjusted (height-wise, etc) with the left hand - an important thing when your client is a young man who works in CAD design and has lost all use of his right arm in an accident.

We found the chair, but we needed other things. An appropriately left-handed mouse device. A numeric keypad we could move to the left side of the keyboard, and a keyboard where he could type efficiently with just one hand.

In other case, helping a hotel pool maintainer, also without the use of his right arm, move up to desk clerk, we needed to find a left-hand typing solution. In this case, unlike the one above, this would be a multi-user computer. At busy times up to three or four employees would jump on the same keyboard in quick alternation.

There are lots of reasons to seek keyboard alternatives. First, text entry systems should be chosen for comfort and function, and not left to the crap delivered with most computers. Second, people have unique needs and preferences. Third, my guess is that more people are injured by their keyboards than by any other workplace device: The way the human wrist is forced to bend to type on a flat-straight keyboard buts terrible pressure on certain arteries, causing permanent pain. Fourth, we already know that many of us now type faster on phone keypads than we do on the 'old' keyboards. Finally, not everyone has two working hands.

So when a question about one-handed keyboards recently arrived on a list serve, I watched the options offered with great interest. So what if this question comes to you?

As is often the case, Charlie Danger is a good place to start. He begins with the free re-mapping of your Windows computer keyboard with downloads from Microsoft.

I've had great experiences with the Half Keyboard (or here), a mini-keyboard that merges the left and right halves of the traditional QWERTY board into a 'single half.'

The Half QWERTY (or here), though much more expensive, has the advantage of functioning as a 'regular' keyboard when multiple users are on the same machine. (This proved the perfect solution for a one-handed hotel desk clerk I worked with - there just was not good room for multiple keyboards.)

The Frogpad (or here), which began the conversation, is great for those who can learn it, and who have the necessary multi-finger dexterity.

OATS has a couple of great solutions, the "phone keypad" based Dkey with phone-type predictive spelling, and the gesture driven Qwriting. Both completely free, of course.

Tapir is another free phone keypad based solution.

For a physical version of the phone keypad, the Cre8txt system is a wonderful solution. "[T]his device [claims the website] captures the writing skills that so many young people have developed themselves using their mobile phones. It probably isn't going to surprise you to know that most young people can touch type at phenomenal speeds without even looking at their mobile phone."

And just to suggest - Speech Recognition, either Dragon or within Windows Vista (or simply using Dial2Do) - is always another solution.

The trick is - as always - that we have a flood of choices. Choices we hardly ever see in workplaces and never see when schools begin to teach "keyboarding." Choices which enable rather than disable or frustrate.

The way you "type" simply does not matter. The words, the ideas, the communication - that's what matters. Using two hands, or one, or none.

- Ira Socol

Hardware every school should have on hand...

I believe that every school needs an assortment of keyboards and 'pointers' (mice) if they are to actually teach 'keyboarding' and/or computer use to students. You probably don't need more than one or two of any particular choice - certainly not until student needs/preferences become known - but you need to have these options on hand wherever computers are in use. Not having them is the same as not having accessible entries and rest rooms.

There are the classics that should always be on hand, BigKeys, Dvorak, One-Handed, various ergonomics, but there are a few new items which seem important to have on hand if your school is not going to deny reasonable access to a range of students. (By the way, shifting to Dvorak simply requires changing Windows or Apple control panel settings and a bit of ingenuity, you don't really need to buy anything.)

One keyboard solution is using the ABC layout. This becomes more and more logical as students train early in life on devices (such as phones) with ABC patterning, after all, there is no logic to the QWERTY system, only ancient history.

The "new standard" ABC keyboard is one option in either 'classic' black and white or the more unique green and purple look.

If you are outside the US the 'Easy as ABC' Keyboard is a more traditional looking solution.

Keyboarding, if taught, must first include keyboard choice. This is not just for those with special needs because it is probably true that more people are injured each year by their keyboards than any other single piece of employment-related equipment (carpal tunnel, anyone?). And keyboard flexibility is an essential part of our current/future economy. I type on a regular-looking keyboard. I also type on my mobile. I type on the on-screen keyboards on handheld devices. I type in various countries using, of course, the keyboards of those countries.

I have to admit that I often laugh when travelling with trained touch typists. Being a "one-fingerer" myself phone keys don't bother me, WindowsMobile ABC arrangements don't bother me, nor does a keyboard in France or Germany. My friends who succeeded in learning "typing" are, however, completely thrown. "The keys aren't in the same places!" they shout. "No they are not," I reply, adding that, "finally, I win."

Remember that size - surely with keyboards - also matters. Small hands need smaller keyboard reaches. And of course left-handers need attention as well. If not acquiring truly left-handed keyboards at least make sure that you can place the numeric keypad on the left side for the student who needs that.

Your students need mouse choices as well:

One of the best discoveries I've made is the 3M Renaissance Mouse, which seems to offer positive mouse control in some extreme of examples of dexterity limitations. It even comes in two sizes.

Others include the Hover-Stop Mouse which simplifies control to movement alone. The Big Track - great for the young and those without fine motor control. And yes, the foot-mouse. There are hundreds of other choices, pick a few, and let students consider which is best for their own needs.

Don't forget the basic option of the trackball, which is just much more intuitive for many kids, and much less stressful for many workers. The Trackman Wheel remains one of the most comfortable of these, but visit any office supply store, and think of the possibilities.

A decade ago (or more), when I first began working in assistive technology at Grand Valley State University, we put a "one-of-each" box in each campus building with computer labs. There was a BigKeys keyboard with a removable keyguard, a Dvorak keyboard, a numeric keypad with larger keys, four or five different "mice." Headsets for speech recognition and text-to-speech. And we set up a check-out system. Trade your student ID for the device you wanted - no "special permissions" needed. Back then, in the era of PS2 connections it was a pain in the arse. You had to restart each time you switched one of these devices, and we needed special "dual keyboard adapters" if two people with differing needs wanted to work on the same machine. Now, USB links make this simple, and very easy, and every one of these options costs far less now than the price back in the last century.

So is your school equipped with these options? If it is not, it is not accessible, and access to information and communication is not equal.

- Ira Socol

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