Your Child Needs Keyboard Skills Today, But Maybe There is a Light at the "End of the Tunnel" By FRANK J. DUTKO, Ph.D. Director, Futurekids Computer Learning Center August 1997

Frank J. Dutko

Keyboarding is a skill for everybody these days. Gone are the days when "typing" was something for secretaries and writers. Students need to record their thoughts, write class papers and send e-mail messages to friends across town or across the world.

Third grade is a good time to start teaching keyboarding skills. Children have the coordination necessary by then. Plus, they often have the desire to learn.

For home teaching, buy one of the popular keyboarding CD ROMs available such as "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing". With encouragement from you and some self-motivation from your child, this may be enough to get started. Some schools include keyboarding in their computer curriculum. If this occurs, your child may be regularly practicing keyboarding drills. Be sure and ask what software is used and how the drills are made to be fun. Many children learn at after school enrichment classes. Look for an enrichment class that uses a variety of software programs, alternates accuracy drills with speed drills and gives students frequent encouragement to improve their skills.

But maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. IBM recently began selling voice-recognition software called ViaVoice. This software would let people talk to their computers and their words would be converted into text in a word processing program. (I know that there are some things I would like to say to my computer !! ). In fact, ViaVoice interfaces nicely with Microsoft Word.

The problem in the past with voice-recognition software was that people had to pause in between words in order for the computer to be accurate. This was not very natural for people to do. ViaVoice lets people talk as fast as 140 words per minute in a normal speaking voice.

And the price is right…$99 for ViaVoice. System requirements are: A Pentium 166 MHz or 150 MHz with MMX equipped with an industry-standard sound card such as SoundBlaster or those that are 100 percent compatible; 125 MB of free hard disk space; 32 MB RAM (48 MB RAM for Windows NT). The software even comes with a headset for hands-off dictating. Future versions of ViaVoice will allow people to verbally give system commands such as Save Files. (Again, there are some commands I would like to give to my computer…..).

For Keyboarding Classes, contact Futurekids Computer Learning Center at (609) 897-9595, or by e-mail to frank2000@uscom.com

For more information about ViaVoice, see http://www.ibm.com/News/1997/08/ls970819.html

Note added: See the recent issue of Slate for an article by Bill Barnes entitled "Hear Me: Rating the new voice-recognition software". This article compares IBM's ViaVoice Software to Dragon Systems' Naturally Speaking software.

Frank J. Dutko, Ph.D., is the Director and Owner of Futurekids Computer Learning Center, located in the Village Square Shopping Center, 217 Clarksville Rd., Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, (609) 897-9595. Futurekids teaches adults and children to be masters of the computer.