Quiet Aunt Zelda

I remember way back in elementary school, probably second grade or so... down in the basement, beside the library was a lab of really old [though I guess not so much at the time] Unisys/ICON computers. You know, the ones with the big trackball on the corner of the keyboard, and the 'Action' button for clicking. Our class would go down there once or twice a week to play the educational 'games', like Robots R&D, and that one where you were a fur trader canoeing across Canada. Or something.

Then one day, at the end of the period, they brought in a TV, and told us to find a program on the list called 'ALMENA' and start it up. They then guided us through this video while we typed on our keyboards:

Quiet Aunt Zelda.
Willy Sits eXams.
Every Dad Cares.

And so on. I remember all the lines to this day, because over the next few months they were burned into our minds. Why? They were trying to teach us typing--Just take a look at the bolded letters. They were supposed to be 'easy' phrases for us to remember the layout of the QWERTY keyboard, in columns, starting with the Q, and moving across to P.

A few years later in the fourth grade, we got these things called 'Type Writes'. They were a basically a small plastic computer-typewriter, with a small screen maybe 30 characters long. They came with a book of exercises that you could punch into the machine, and then you'd type the text of the exercise as quickly and accurately as you could, and it would measure how you did.

Anyway, how did you learn to type? Did you have similar programs in your schools? Or did you learn by sitting at the computer all the time, and just catching on? Are you still typing with two fingers, or do you use the 'home row'? Discuss.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I type in the home position as I was taught in school, but i was didn't become proficient as a result of those lessons in school. I learned by applying some of what i knew from those lessons, and typing lots on msn and writing emails. I always found those typing programs to be too distracting to retain anything from, and in the end it was just sitting and teaching myself that did the trick.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

There were typing programs we had to do in elementary. I believe it was pretty much your standard kind of homerow typing program. Ie. you positioned your hands, and then started doing;

asdf jkl; rvtgb etc

I found I got better score by using two fingers.

I first started using instant messenger in high school. Simply the massive amounts of typing I did taught me where all of the keys were, and that two fingered typing gradually evolved into some semblance of your homerow thing, although I'm pretty sure I still don't do it right. But hey, it works, and I can type without looking.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The typing lessons at my elementary school gave me an undying hatred for the home row keys.

Our computers were ancient macintosh things. Two of the lab computers couldn't do colors other than varying shades of green and they all used those wonderful ancient floppy diskettes. It was fairly random whether we'd get stuck using the program where you sat there typing in random words for an hour or something fun like Oregon Trail and that ocean game where you tried to eat as much plankton as possible without dying a terrible fishy death. While doing the typing "games" one of the computer teachers, a skeletal woman named Patsy, would get very angry if you ever took your fingers off the home row. So of course I did it as often as possible, because it provided a small source of amusement, and also because my hands weren't large enough at that age to reach some of the letters without painfully stretching my fingers.

Since I grew up thinking of the home row keys as painful to use, slower, and generally pointless I've never bothered to stop typing with just two fingers. Trying it now feels cramped and awkward, so I doubt I'll ever bother to change. Memorizing key locations from messing around on the computer a lot has worked just as well for me.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Most of my typing was practically self taught.

I only really took one typing course throughout all of school and that was in Grade 9. We were using the typing tutor program, and to be honest the class itself was kind of boring. The only entertaining aspect of that class is that the teacher was really hard on this students and it wouldn't be surprising to see 2-3 students get kicked out of his class for being obnoxious.

I can type fairly fast, but I still tend to look at the keyboard for the majority of the time. I tend to use anywhere for three to four fingers to type. The strangest thing the majority of my typing is done by my right hand.

How ya doing, buddy?

Initially I was horrible. I took the typing class in middle school and high school, and got to a certain point but never went beyond that level due to time constaints. Hence, I wasn't able to fully type. Furthermore, I was sloppy and had tons of typo in what I typed. I don't know how many times my peers would bash my essays online (I took online classes for my basic writing classes) because sheer number of typos.

However, as it were, I got interested in writing roleplays and hence got better as time went on. I still make typos and such but my accuracy is far better than it was, say, ten years ago. As a bonus, for some reason my spelling accuracy is fairly high as well, probably due to the number of times I had to correct spelling errors rather than typos.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I took a class in high school that taught the home row style. I really don't remember much of the exact lessons other than typing up sentences 30 times each or so. I got so bored with that that I would just type out one sentence and copy and paste that. I got away with it for quite a while. The teacher claimed that I would not learn that way and yet here I am still using the home row technique and get decent typing speed out of it.

The games as I remember were pretty boring. I wish Typing of the Dead was out when I was a freshman in high school.

FELIPE NO

I more or less learned by myself.
Although in 8th grade I had to take a typing class with some 20-year-old electric typewriters. I remember having to constantly tweak the ribbon to produce a decent line of type, and having to go over typing drills that pertained to finger position and using special keys like SHIFT and SPACEBAR.

It wasn't bad, really. We didn't do much classwise so I was able to chat with my friends a lot.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I fucked around during typing class in elementary school (I was an angsty little child during 5th grade and couldn't have given two poops about it) so I never really learned how to type until my Freshman year when I took Keyboarding. I absolutely loved the class, and became very proficient in my typing. I'd be in the library at school typing something and be looking out the window...One time the librarian came over to make sure I was actually typing something and not just fucking around and hogging a computer.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

On maybe three occasions total, we were all shunted into the computer room and given a crash course in total keyboard wizardry. Three of us to an old Acorn Archimedes, taking turns on the keyboard. And yeah, we were given lists of those short phrases to bash through. I didn't bother. My first crack at a keyboard came when I was around four, and I'd stopped doing the whole use-your-index-finger-and-poke-all-over-the-place thing by age six. Around the time that school actually started trying to teach us to type, I was doing 80wpm on my own technique.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't look at the keyboard often when I typing, only when I do programming do I look more often cuz of the symbols.

In high-school we had a typing-tutor class with was boring as hell and same in the first year of college.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I learned to type using the home row keys in school, but I didn't really like the program they used (I have no idea what it was). My mom found a Mario Bros typing game one day, so I played that all the time.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I also learned typing using the home row keys at school. I remember using this old program called Typing Wizard or something. I also remember using this program called LOGO. I don't remember too much of it except all you had to do was type in some coordinates or something and the little "turtle", as the teacher would call it, would move to those coordinates.

Haha. Oh man, those were the days...

How ya doing, buddy?

My Mum had me try out a "Mario Teaches Typing" game when I was a kid, though I can't remember exactly. It wasn't terribly entertaining, though it did break me of looking at the keyboard. I picked up speed later when I bought my first computer and started writing stories and papers on it around the ninth grade.

Ah, nostalgia. That was the happiest day of my childhood, the day all that work came to fruition and I got to go buy a computer.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Really Garr? That's how I learned. Fair enough I can't type numbers and most symbols from the home position but I'm pretty proficient and quite fast).

I don't remember ever having any official typing lessons. They just made us use the computer for projects like Biographies or reports on school trips. It explains why most of the people in my classes would always type at about one word per hour. Those that could type either taught themselves or just used the internet and messenger too much, like me.

Oh yes and Typing of the Dead might have played some part in my learning.

FELIPE NO

In elementary school we learned through a couple of general programs and stuff... If we were to play any games in those classes, it had to be educational. So we played Super Muncher, which was an ultimate win of a game, regardless of it's educational value.

In middle school, we were taught to use home row and stuff using your pinky on adsf jkl;, but I never really followed it since I had already taught myself to type in 6th grade using three fingers on each hand... Shift exclusively for my pinky.

Some people still didn't type quickly enough in high school, so we had our options to take Business Word Processing, which taught typing along with how to write several types of papers. I was still faster than a good majority of the people in my class who actually used all four fingers though...

In short, none of the lessons actually helped me. I ended up teaching myself through IMing people and just learning not to look at the keyboard when I type.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

"We learned on the computer." PHHHT!!!!

Try learning on one of these:



Pain in the ass....

I STILL hit the keys too hard on my keyboard....

Oh, and I am self-taught on the typewriter, but had to re-learn for the placement on a keyboard, so I took a HIGH SCHOOL class....

....jerks...

Oh, look, another gray hair...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

My grandma was a typist for Jostens (the company that does a lot of the High School Yearbooks), so she was completely fixated on me learning how to type properly. Since I wasn't going to get this "training" in school until 8th grade, she decided to buy me Mavis Beacon and make me learn on my own.

I hated its damned background music, and I don't think I went through more than 7 of the lessons, but I did learn how to type. However, I have some weird quirks, such as the fact that I don't use the right-hand shift key for anything. Somehow I never trained that pinky to use that button . I suppose it makes it awkward to do capitals on that side, but my left hand is used to stretching and playing viola anyways.

I never really learned my number keys, though. I still have to look when I type anything with numbers.

There's nowhere I can't reach.