Funny: Senior Moment

Only funny if you learned to type before word processors otherwise just odd behavior. Ask your grandparents...they will explain it.

Typing a panagram

If you ever took a typing class than you probably had the experience of typing:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This phrase is an example of a pangram, a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. When I taught keyboarding to middle schoolers I often used this phrase to help kids see which letters were giving them problems. My typing teacher back in my old high school did the same thing for me. (To me?)

I used to make up my own pangrams to spice things up a little. It gets boring typing the same thing over and over again. I was reminded of this when I ran across Pangramaday, the website of a person that writes a pangram each day. They are much more poetic than the lame ones I created. They'd be fun to add into your drill and practice. The kids will think you are awesome. Parents will think you are clever. Principals will congratulate themselves for hiring you. All this praise because of a simple sentence that turns your youngsters into speed typists.

Some examples from the site:

• Thunderstorms beat a quickstep across the valley; forget what quiet jazz existed.
• I noticed his glazed pompadour had acquired a killer swoop; a foxy wave befitting a jester.
• Albuquerque nights project fake moonlight over wide expanses of brazen sky.

I got curious if there were any other panagram sites out there as Pangramaday doesn't have a lot of choices as of yet. The author is going to add one each morning but he has only been writing them for a few weeks. I searched and here are a few examples out of the thousands of pages about panagrams available.

• Wikipedia has a page devoted to panagrams.
• Panagram page at Fun With Words.
• The Pangram Page

[Image is my own creation...yes I know I just typed the alphabet in Photoshop and added a triangle. But it's a nice shade of green don't you think?]

Online Typing Practice

Keybr.com lets you practice your typing online. You don't need to download anything and it's free. There is some unobtrusive advertising. There are no games. No fancy pictures. Just a keyboard and the words to be typed.

Good resource you could point your students towards if they need to bring their speed and/or accuracy up. The words generated are all gibberish but I used it for about a half hour and it seemed to work fine. The program did seem to get a little sluggish when my speed got up in the 50 plus words per minute range. My relaxed typing speed is around 35 wpm and it didn't have any problem keeping up at that pace.

One of the things I noticed while teaching keyboarding skills at the middle level was that when kids used the typing games, they played to win the game, not improve their speed or accuracy. When I worked my students with instructor led drill and practice they seemed to do improve faster. I like a lot of the programs but I just don't think most of my kids really wanted to get faster. They just wanted to play the game. Just a thought for those of you getting ready to teach typing skills to younger kids.

Reading through the site forum, there is a warning that the keys may not map correctly for this keyboard image if you are using a Mac. I do use a Mac but didn't notice any problem. Granted, I rarely look at the keyboard or the diagram thanks to a typing teacher fresh from Texas who walked around with a ruler and a very commanding voice. I was sixteen years old and did whatever that woman told me to, including not looking at my hands.

[Story Source: Lifehacker: Kevin Purdy: Practice and Improve Touchtyping at Keybr.com]
[Image: Captured from www.keybr.com]