Wednesday, April 6, 2011

BP4_TypingWeb


One of the challenges that university students face is that many of them do not know how to type. This is one of the frustrations that they have when they learn they have to write research papers or reports. What we often get are papers filled with typing and other errors. It is my feeling that students need to know how to type and type correctly. If we want students to use computers and the Web 2.0 tools they need to know how to type. In searching through the Web 2.0 tools I found TypingWeb.com and I like it.

TypingWeb: http://www.typingweb.com/ is a free online typing tutor. On this site you can learn how to type by following lessons. The site contains beginners, intermediate, and advanced courses, as well as, specialty and premium lessons. You can keep up with the latest headline news as you practice your typing skills in the “News Headline Exercises” lesson. As you type the site tracks which keys you have problems with and there is a section where you can work to improve these keys. Once you have completed the lessons you can take the online test to receive a typing certificate that you can print out. The Typing Institute of America officially authorizes the certificates for TypingWeb.com

The TypingWeb Teacher Portal is also a free online account. The Teacher Portal allows you as a teacher to manage your students’ progress, track their lessons and you can report on your students all within this portal. You can add students and group them into classrooms. You can link students who are already had a TypingWeb account with your teacher portal. The Teacher Portal allows you to monitor the progress of each student and track that students’ individual improvement. Graphs can be created to show the levels of improvement in net speed, gross speed, and accuracy. You can run reports using the Score section of the portal and data can also be exported.



 

TypingWeb.com has a blog with links to social networking sites.



The site also has various games that help you improve your typing skills, accuracy, and speed. I only played a few of the games and I found them entertaining and useful. This website can be used by elementary as well as university students. Like other sites you can pay for upgrades if you like.


 I found this Web 2.0 tool to be very user friendly and it’s free. 

1 comment:

  1. Rosetta! I love this application! Thank you so much for sharing, this will be great for my ESL learners! Most of them use different keyboards. Not only that but they are not familiar with typing in English. Thanks again!

    Meesh

    ReplyDelete