Touch Typing: a 21st Century Skill

This morning I am meeting with the principal at our kids’ elementary school.  I am hoping to convince him that touch typing is more important for the kids to learn than good hand writing.  When I look at my total output these days, a tiny fraction of it involves pen and paper.  But I do write a lot every day on a computer keyboard.

I find that writing blog posts, answering emails, putting together presentations (and most of all coding) all benefit greatly from my ability to touch type.  I did not learn it in school in Germany, but lucked out when I came to the States and had my host family there suggest that it would be a useful skill (I learned on an IBM Correcting Selectric type writer, the one with the ball head).

It is of course conceivable that keyboard input too will become antiquated.  I grant that possibility, but until then, touch typing is amazingly useful.  There are now a number of free learning to type programs online.  The one that looks best is TypingWeb, although I would love to find one that was more like a video game.