# Touch Typing: a 21st Century Skill

**Published by:** [Continuations](https://continuations.com/)
**Published on:** 2009-12-01
**Categories:** education
**URL:** https://continuations.com/touch-typing-a-21st-century-skill

## Content

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.

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