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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Can you type?
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
What about those virtual keyboards someone thought up where something sensed where you placed your fingers on a projected image of a keyboard on the actual desktop?
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Just backing up my girl Penny:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Snap, and I get an extra point for being female and sciencey.
And Horseman Bree, can you go and contribute some of that on the touch typing thread? My feeling that it is wholly inappropriate for primary children seems to be falling on deaf ears ... or appropriate metaphor.
? The hell?
Most primary kid fingers do not have the kind of reach they need to comfortably do home- row touch-typing.
Go and read. Apparently by not teaching it I have been depriving them forever of an essential skill. (Not just the reach, the coordination.)
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Nonsense. Do we teach kids cursive the minute they pick up a pen? Allowing them to hunt and peck the keyboard for a good space of time allows them to get a good mental map of the keyboard itself, so that when touch typing comes, they have an idea of where the keys are.
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Once again-- boil the water, then add pasta.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Thank you.
Mind you, we might have a fruitful conversation about when to start cursive...
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
How do typists find touch screen keyboards?
With their fingers?
Strange though it may first seem, the small keyboard on my iPhone not as bad as a tablet.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
There's not much in the way of formal "typing" classes, but the students seem to be able to rattle the keys at an adequate speed any time I observe them. Until we get everyone on tablets with voice, the kids will learn to type - how else will they get anything done - emailed homework assignments and papers, chat rooms, all sorts of stuff.
And, at last, the boys' inability to hand write doesn't matter!
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Exposure to typing is no problem, in my mind-- It's just the home- row touch typing thing that we're deciding is bonkers for primary school expectations, right?
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Unless they want to - I have come across a few older (7,8 or older) primary students who have seen me touch type and wanted to try, so I've found them Mavis Beacon or the BBC Dance Mat typing and let them have a go. One or two persisted and learned.
But primary pupils can be determined to learn something if they want it enough. Typing is not that dissimilar to playing the piano.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
I" If they want to," sure, but that would be the key phrase. If they want to, it implies they can manage it.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
Touch typing was never taught at school but when we got the A3000 (summer term of Yr 7) we got a typing programme and I taught myself. I'm typing this on a bluetooth keyboardfor my tablet. I hate the onscreenkeyboard because it doesn't work with touch typing. I'm in fact typing this whilelookingat the televeision not even the screenof the tablet!
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
Last post would have been more impressive if the spacebar had been working!
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Fineline
Shipmate
# 12143
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Posted
I don't get why it wouldn't be useful to teach primary children, once they've learnt to write. It's surely no more complex than learning piano, and it's a useful skill to have. And also very handy for those who have disabilities that make handwriting difficult. I went to school with a kid who had a visual disability and she had been taught to touch type at around age 7 as a result of this - she was very adept at it.
Posts: 2375 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2006
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fineline:
I don't get why it wouldn't be useful to teach primary children, once they've learnt to write. It's surely no more complex than learning piano, and it's a useful skill to have. And also very handy for those who have disabilities that make handwriting difficult. I went to school with a kid who had a visual disability and she had been taught to touch type at around age 7 as a result of this - she was very adept at it.
The problem is that children differ in the size of their hands and in the development of muscle control. I think teaching touch-typing to ten-year-olds is a good idea. Almost all of them will be physically ready for it.
You spoke of the piano. My older daughter was very musical; when she was five years old the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a musical instrument. She was extremely small for her age, so we started her on a 1/8 size violin. Her hands were not large enough to do much with a piano until she was about ten.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Fineline
Shipmate
# 12143
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
The problem is that children differ in the size of their hands and in the development of muscle control. I think teaching touch-typing to ten-year-olds is a good idea. Almost all of them will be physically ready for it.
You spoke of the piano. My older daughter was very musical; when she was five years old the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a musical instrument. She was extremely small for her age, so we started her on a 1/8 size violin. Her hands were not large enough to do much with a piano until she was about ten.
Yes, ten would be a good age. Or maybe eight. I wasn't thinking five, as children are still learning to write at that stage. I'd see it as most important to wait till the children are fairly competent at reading and writing - to be familiar with the alphabet and how words and language work.
I don't see hand size as a difficulty - the finger stretching on a regular computer keyboard is far less than that of a piano, and there are also plenty of netbooks, including those made specially for kids, with smaller keyboards.
Regarding muscle control, it's important to do things that require muscle control, to help develop it. Writing requires fine motor skills just as much as typing does - probably more so - but children still start learning to write at age 5. Sure, it's difficult to begin with, as they don't have that control, but they still start and the control develops.
I remember we had a term of typing lessons at school when I was eleven, and my typing teacher said that children who play the piano tend to be faster at learning to type because they've already developed that particular type of muscle control and strength. Although I guess finger strength isn't required so much now people use keyboards - we were using old-fashioned typewriters back then, which required quite strong strokes!
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I've had piano teachers actively dissuade me from starting my kid in piano till he was about eight or nine, telling me I'd be wasting time before then. As they were speaking against their own financial interest,I assumed they knew what they were talking about, and held off. The hand size has made a difference to what LL can handle as he grows (he's got a ten-key reach right now!) and I can see how it would matter for fullsize computer keyboards as well.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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ecumaniac
Ship's whipping girl
# 376
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Posted
Yeah, my piano teacher wouldn't take me until age 7. But I have friends who started on scaled down string instruments really really early, and did great.
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it's a secret club for people with a knitting addiction, hiding under the cloak of BDSM - Catrine
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
I started piano lessons at age nine. I have big hands and learned well. Although we have a piano, I rarely play although knowing how to read music really helps me when I sing bass in a local choir which performs at our local Irish cultural center...
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
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An die Freude
Shipmate
# 14794
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Posted
Coming from a musical family, I'd restrict music lessons until 15. It warps your personality and musicality otherwise. Then again, I'd restrict Bible studies as well to a similar age, to remove the sense of knowing what's going to happen and that faith is a kid thing. And again, children's mileage vary - just make sure that it's completely voluntary so as not to remove the pleasure and play from adult musicality. If you're after skill, that's something you'll build ten times as quickly after 15 anyway. (I can hear the hissing of purists in the wings, but I've got a nice set of true stories to back this up.)
As for typing, I got touch typing classes in school but they gave me very, very little and I didn't pick it up then at all. However, getting an own computer at 15, I learned it by chatting and writing on forums, and got even better in university. One professor called me the most ardent note-taker he'd seen. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Never tested my speed, but I'd guess somewhere around 50-60 wpm, with about 80-90% accuracy, depending on what kind of typing. Class note-taking has accuracy plummeting as it's for memory, not reading. Like Comet, I only use three fingers on each hand (except thumbs for space of course). Balance works out better that way, or something.
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"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable."
Walt Whitman
Formerly JFH
Posts: 851 | From: Proud Socialist Monarchy of Sweden | Registered: May 2009
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
I respectfully disagree. Children have much more flexible hands than adolescents/adults and there are some major advantages to starting to learn an instrument younger. For strings, the ideal age is between 5 and 10. A tiny percentage of people who start later end up becoming professional musicians but it is a tiny minority.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
I agree with la vie en rouge. I also think this is a fascinating tangent which is probably worthy of its own thread!
And, back to our home keys!
jedijudy
Heaven Host giving a gentle steer to the thread.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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GCabot
Shipmate
# 18074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Given that, introducing the children to what could be done with a computer in terms of art, research, editing text, presentations, making animations, photo processing, desk top publishing, use of spreadsheets, & manipulating simulations, seemed much more appropriate than just learning touch typing, especially when many primary children lack the coordination to do it successfully.
I do not see the point in introducing children to things like making animations, spreadsheets, etc. As you implied earlier, whatever programs they use will be completely obsolete by the time those skills are useful. Furthermore, many of these are niche skills.
Touch typing will always have a place. Typing on a touch screen is vastly inferior in terms of efficiency, and there are many places where voice dictation is impossible: the classroom, the office, the library, etc.
I also do not understand your coordination argument. We were taught the recorder at seven and I started piano lessons around the same time. Children of that age are easily coordinated enough to learn to type.
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GCabot:
Touch typing will always have a place.
Well you say that, but just because virtual keyboards are 'less efficient' does not mean they will not win out. Have they hindered the rise of texting? What happens is that people have adapted language to facilitate the technology - txtspk lol!
I can touch type - but because the iPad offers me such much more in terms of convenience and portability, the 'place' of TT in my life will only be for composing serious amounts of text eg writing a book (which doesn't happen that often).
Horses for courses.
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GCabot
Shipmate
# 18074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by GCabot:
Touch typing will always have a place.
Well you say that, but just because virtual keyboards are 'less efficient' does not mean they will not win out. Have they hindered the rise of texting? What happens is that people have adapted language to facilitate the technology - txtspk lol!
I can touch type - but because the iPad offers me such much more in terms of convenience and portability, the 'place' of TT in my life will only be for composing serious amounts of text eg writing a book (which doesn't happen that often).
Horses for courses.
Sure, for casual use, you may be correct, but not in the business world, where worker efficiency is paramount.
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
You learned recorder successfully young. There are children who do. But in my experience, there are many who cannot, and subsequently resist trying when their coordination has caught up. I was initially pleased when our feeder school started introducing recorder to whole classes, as I thought that would make it easier for our children to progress. What happened was that the children with less physical ability were dropped, and then believed that they couldn't learn the instrument. We had fewer children taking it up. I wouldn't want that to happen with typing.
To base what is taught to primary age children on what they might need on entering the workplace at 18 is to follow the pattern of Gradgrind.
Two examples. When I was 10 or 11, I had to learn to do long division of Imperial measures. I suppose that if I had married a man with an estate, I just might have needed the ability to calculate in bushels and pecks, but it was extremely unlikely. For any who did, by the time they were old enough, they would have been calculating in decimal measures and using calculators.
My sister taught maths near to a car plant. She was told that certain aspects of trigonometry were essential for pupils who would go on to work there in working out the shapes of bodywork sections. (Not, of course, all the pupils.) So she went down to the factory to see the process in action. What actually happened was that the workers used angle templates, and they knew their stuff so well that they could reach for the right combination almost without looking. Firstly, they did not do trig. And secondly, they had learned their advanced skills on the job.
Touch typing is obviously an important skill for people doing typing in their employment. That is a subset of people in employment. For those who are going to need it, it is perfectly possible to learn it at secondary school age to a high standard. That was what was done in the past when many more people were employed in typing pools. It has not become appropriate for primary schools simply because of the availability of keyboards for that age group.
Children of primary school age need a lot of diverse activities in their lives in order to learn. There isn't the time to spend on repetitive boring tasks that can equally well be learned later.
Also, the activities I listed earlier would be used to deliver other parts of the curriculum, not as stand alone "niche" activities. History, maths, geography (the Powerpoint presentations I referred to were showing what had been learned about rivers), literacy (the newspaper module was particular well suited to DTP), science (we made interactive keys for sorting creatures found in the garden). There was a lot of productive learning going on, and there simply would not have been the time available to do it if we had had to spend it doing typing practice, with the half class for whom we had keyboards. (I suppose we could have had half the class practising handwriting while the others accessed the machines.)
[ 15. June 2014, 08:54: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Typing is a fairly boring skill that just needs practice to master. Fortunately I don't think Gove will prize it enough to want that skill included in his very pared down, very academic new curriculum. It's probably worth offering as an alternative activity, like a lunchtime club, in schools, but unfortunately it is another sitting down and being good exercise, so unhelpful in other ways.
Genuinely, spreadsheets, programming and graphics manipulation are skills that teach far more abstract concepts and ideas, which is why the IT curriculum is changing/has almost completely changed to include them, rather than the current version which is basically training youngsters to be office drones and use Micro$oft products - we can't use OpenSource or other alternatives as they won't pass the qualifications.
xp with Penny S - saying pretty much the same thing
[ 15. June 2014, 08:59: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Indeed. I hadn't mentioned the difference of opinion between us and the nearby City Technology College about the source of software. They wanted us to use office standard. I wanted us to use (once away from Word and Excel) the products of a company based in the UK with a name derived from a typeface feature. I pointed out that what the office standard was when the children were 7 would not be standard when they entered the office and indicated recent changes in the Seattle products. As they would have to unlearn stuff as they grew, why not use different programs anyway. They had no hold on us at the time, and I went my own way.
They've won, though. As the local academy hub, they now own the school.
[ 15. June 2014, 09:15: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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GCabot
Shipmate
# 18074
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Posted
Penny S - Pretty much any office job is going to require the ability to type effectively, and this is the direction that Western first world economies have been moving in for decades now. Furthermore, it is an essential skill for secondary and university education. Without a competent ability to type, children are at a serious disadvantage compared to those who have that ability, which in turn negatively affects their future prospects.
Unlike with musical instruments, typing is not a skill one can do without moving forward. As for boredem, as lily pad pointed out previously, there are many games and other ways available to make learning to type interesting and fun. That is exactly how I was taught to type.
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
Posts: 285 | From: The Heav'n Rescued Land | Registered: Apr 2014
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GCabot:
Pretty much any office job is going to require the ability to type effectively
Mebbe. Mebbe no. At the age you suggest learning to type, I was being taught cursive script (with a dip pen) because good handwriting was the essential skill....
And perhaps the future will be the ability to interact successfully with voice recognition software.
Educate to develop creativity, logic, problem solving - repetitive manual skills you can pick up any time (I acquired typing when I was 27).
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
And perhaps the future will be the ability to interact successfully with voice recognition software.
Unlikely to catch on in the modern office environment, I fancy, where contact with the outside world has moved away from the phone to email. Some offices are mostly silent these days, except for the clattering of keyboards and hum of air conditioning.
But I agree, it'll be interesting to see how it shapes up.
[ 15. June 2014, 12:20: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I respectfully disagree. Children have much more flexible hands than adolescents/adults and there are some major advantages to starting to learn (driving go-karts) younger. For (racing) the ideal age is... 5
If your father hasn't bought you a kart by the time you are 5, you'll never be a Formula One or Le Mans driver. If you didn't get your first pair of football boots at age 7, you'll probably never get into any form of professional football especially the Premier League or national sides!
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I am not against learning touch typing skills. I am against pushing the learning of them down into the primary school. Beyond the essential of using both hands, and suggesting that they try to use more than one finger, that is.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
And I am, as usual, for loads of unfettered exploration of a keyboard before formal expectations of product.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Pure Sunshine
Shipmate
# 11904
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Posted
I was at secondary school in the UK in the mid-90s and we learned touch-typing via a computer program at some point - I suppose I would have been about 12 or 13? I'm fairly quick and fairly accurate, not on the level of a professional typist, but good enough to convince older male colleagues that I have some kind of amazing capabilities. I think this is pretty typical of people my age, of either gender. I don't think I'd do well with a typewriter, though - not only are the keys too heavy, but I do need to delete my mistakes sometimes!
Despite being right-handed, I generally type better with my left hand - I suspect this has a lot to do with learning the violin before I learned to type, and therefore being more nimble-fingered with my left hand than right. I therefore don't really use the fourth and fifth fingers on the right hand, the ones that are supposed to type the L, O and P keys, and tend to mess up punctuation marks a lot more as a result. Generally, though, I can type more or less without looking.
As for children struggling to type on a full-size adult keyboard: I got a new laptop last year and not only are the keys more flat, I think they are also more spaced apart. I've had to get used to that a bit; it's not ideal.
Posts: 472 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2006
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marzipan
Shipmate
# 9442
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Posted
I can't touch type - we spent some time in school being taught it but didn't spend much time on it and I didn't see the point at the time.
I am reasonably good at typing with four fingers but I do make quite a lot of typos if I am not careful (lucky I never had to use a typewriter)
At work I don't do too much typing as mostly use CAD programs - I use the keyboard commands but they are normally only one or two letters. I'm best at typing on the numeric keypad as most of the quick typing I do is numbers.
If I had to do a lot of typing words rather than numbers, I'd probably get better at typing but it's unlikely I'd need to type very quickly in this kind of job so I'd only bother trying to touch type if I had to retrain for a different job.
Not all office jobs require typing!
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formerly cheesymarzipan.
Now containing 50% less cheese
Posts: 917 | From: nowhere in particular | Registered: May 2005
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Squirrel
Shipmate
# 3040
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Posted
My mom was a secretary of the old school (very professional and used Pitman Shorthand). She taught me to type at age 12 on an IBM Selectric typewriter (the model that had the characters on small plastic "balls" you would replace in order to change the font).
It was one of the greatest things she did for me. Unlike most of the guys in college, I had no girlfriend to type my papers for me, and as a social science major I was expected to produce volumes of verbiage.
45 years later, I can type in Word faster than all the computer geeks at the office.
In case you've never seen the Selectic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter
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"The moral is to the physical as three is to one."
- Napoleon
"Five to one."
- George S. Patton
Posts: 1014 | From: Gotham City - Brain of the Great Satan | Registered: Jul 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I've got four of those balls i hang on my cubicle wall as a kind of idiot trap--fun to warch people's eyes bug out as fhey try to figure out what the hell those are, without asking.
[ 17. June 2014, 03:24: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
GCabot: quote:
I do not see the point in introducing children to things like making animations, spreadsheets, etc.
Well, I do.
Spreadsheets are widely used in businesses to keep accounts, and are also used by researchers when collating and analysing data. Any child who wants to work in business or do research - or even just study for a degree - needs to know how to use them.
Children who learn how to create animations may go on to work in film or TV; their chances of getting a job as a computer animation artist are far greater than their chances of being the next Sharon Stone or Harrison Ford. Never mind Hollywood; the British film industry makes a significant contribution to the UK economy and a large slice of that is from animation. And it's fun; children who squirm their way through handwriting lessons will happily sit working on an animation for the whole lesson.
Plus the more you learn about computers, the more confident you are about your ability to use them and the more likely you are to put the effort into learning how to use new programs and hardware.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I must admit I started off with that idea about spreadsheets, which my late brother-in-law, in computing from when computing was something to be in, described as a means of multiplying an error - I can't remember how far, but it was around all the way over the sheet. (Been there, done that.)
However, one activity that went on was working out the costs of things for the disco, or school trips, and the use of spreadsheets for that was essential. Probably making cakes for the cake stall and so on, as well. I missed out on the turning them into data entry forms and so on myself, though I went on the course.
I particularly like your last paragraph, BTW.
And my handwriting lessons were fun.
[ 17. June 2014, 16:35: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Penny S: quote:
And my handwriting lessons were fun.
I am impressed. Seriously. ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
I suppose whether or not the lesson is fun does depend on what the little darlings are learning to write. ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
Scott Joplin music (Rifkin's version) because I reckoned the poorer writers had no rhythm. (Nicked that idea from the typing classes I overheard at school. And had spotted in my teens that writing homework to music fell into the rhythm of whatever it was.*) Marching round the classroom between session of writing patterns. Pretend playing the piano to loosen up the fingers. Exercises to help the thumb meeting the fingers to get the grip position right. Making the letter shapes in the air with the whole arm. (It has been found that if you get people to write their signature with their foot, it is recognisable as theirs.) So there was a mix of fighting the pencil and loosening up with larger movements. Ofsted seemed to like it.
*Two pieces I couldn't work with. The cancan in the overture to Orpheus. Too fast. And Bolero. My mind just went round and round and round over the same sentence.
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Jane R
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# 331
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Posted
Sounds great. I felt very sorry for my daughter and her fellow Year 6s last month when they were doing their SATs. The first week after half term they were finally allowed to do fun things again - including one lesson working on computer animations that she enjoyed so much she insisted on telling me about it at great length as soon as she came home.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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GCabot
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# 18074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
GCabot: quote:
I do not see the point in introducing children to things like making animations, spreadsheets, etc.
Well, I do.
Spreadsheets are widely used in businesses to keep accounts, and are also used by researchers when collating and analysing data. Any child who wants to work in business or do research - or even just study for a degree - needs to know how to use them.
Children who learn how to create animations may go on to work in film or TV; their chances of getting a job as a computer animation artist are far greater than their chances of being the next Sharon Stone or Harrison Ford. Never mind Hollywood; the British film industry makes a significant contribution to the UK economy and a large slice of that is from animation. And it's fun; children who squirm their way through handwriting lessons will happily sit working on an animation for the whole lesson.
Plus the more you learn about computers, the more confident you are about your ability to use them and the more likely you are to put the effort into learning how to use new programs and hardware.
Certainly these are important, useful skills. They do not have, however, anywhere near the level of general applicability that touch typing does. Furthermore, spreadsheet and animation software can quickly become outdated. These are areas, ironically, where I would take Penny S's approach and introduce them later in the curriculum. I think that primary school children have more fundamental subjects to tackle than learning spreadsheets or animations.
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
Posts: 285 | From: The Heav'n Rescued Land | Registered: Apr 2014
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
But spreadsheets and animations teach more abstract thinking, which when the rest of the curriculum is overloaded with basic skills and rote learning (times tables, names of parts of speech, spellings, handwriting skills), also needs teaching.
We can, of course, completely revert to the Victorian classroom of rote learning and basic skill teaching, but that would result in adults equipped for the Victorian workplace. Unfortunately, that's not what we currently have, many of the more repetitive roles having been outsourced to the developing world, which would leave us with a bit of a problem.
It would also reprise all those stories of the horrors of being schooled in Victorian times. We have enough of that thinking in the UK currently with the Govian reforms without adding to it unnecessarily.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Ariel
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# 58
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Posted
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.
They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.
They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.
Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.
Art and drawing were taught in a way that involved you looking closely and carefully at the subject you wanted to draw or paint, with the result that many could and did actually produce sketches and drawings that looked like the real thing. Many of today's children have never been taught how to do this and couldn't do a pencil sketch of even a simple, single object.
Technology is a useful thing but when it robs people of developing their own skills, of learning to rely on their own memories, makes them lazy and ignorant about the world they live in, it is not a good thing.
[ 22. June 2014, 12:31: Message edited by: Ariel ]
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GCabot
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# 18074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But spreadsheets and animations teach more abstract thinking, which when the rest of the curriculum is overloaded with basic skills and rote learning (times tables, names of parts of speech, spellings, handwriting skills), also needs teaching.
We can, of course, completely revert to the Victorian classroom of rote learning and basic skill teaching, but that would result in adults equipped for the Victorian workplace. Unfortunately, that's not what we currently have, many of the more repetitive roles having been outsourced to the developing world, which would leave us with a bit of a problem.
It would also reprise all those stories of the horrors of being schooled in Victorian times. We have enough of that thinking in the UK currently with the Govian reforms without adding to it unnecessarily.
I am all for teaching abstract thinking; I am merely unsure whether those would be the most effective mediums.
Also, rote learning is underappreciated in this era wherein so many young people lack basic proficiency in fundamental skills.
Posts: 285 | From: The Heav'n Rescued Land | Registered: Apr 2014
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.
They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.
They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.
Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.
Art and drawing were taught in a way that involved you looking closely and carefully at the subject you wanted to draw or paint, with the result that many could and did actually produce sketches and drawings that looked like the real thing. Many of today's children have never been taught how to do this and couldn't do a pencil sketch of even a simple, single object.
You make Victorian Education sound as awful as I understand it was. I wouldn't want what you describe for my children. It sounds stifling. For example, being expected to write "neatly", something I could not do as a child and cannot do as an adult, unless I'm willing to spend a minute on a couple of words, is something I've managed perfectly well without, and will be increasingly irrelevant in the modern world.
[ 23. June 2014, 11:21: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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The Kat in the Hat
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# 2557
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Posted
Because I was one of the early users of computers in the workplace, and I had a really enquiring mind,I was head hunted to teach other office staff what this new machine could do. We always asked for the attendees to fill in an evaluation form (tell me how great I was). I've never forgotten the beautiful, copper-plate one that no-one could actually read.
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Less is more ...
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