Learning to type
| Time per session | 30 minutes per session approx. |
| How often | Once a week |
| Activity Duration | 9 weeks (14/7/2017 Start) |
| Reflections |
Once a month |
Activity Short Description:
Throughout the month of July, I wil be learning to type without looking at the keyboard through typing.com. Typing fast without looking at the keyboard is key for productivity and it is a field I am quite bad at right now.
Personal Goal for the Activity:
What I hope to accomplish with this activity is to increase my productivity by learning to type faster and looking at my work instead of the keyboard. Being able to look at the screen while typing is crucial to produce quality work needed for the IB. I will know that I have achieved my objectives if I am finally able to type without looking at the keyboard.
Anticipated Learning Outcomes:
2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process:
It will be a challenge for me to start typing without looking at the keyboard, but it will be worth it because I will finally develop a very useful new skill.
Reflections
July
This month, I am starting to learn how to type properly without looking at the keyboard. I have always typed looking at the keyboard, and changing this means a big change for me. I believe it will be hard at the beginning for me to adapt, but I also believe it is best for me since it will make me write faster, therefore improving my productivity.
During the month of July, I will only have one typing class, lasting between one and two hours. I expect that the lessons from typing.com will be easy, but we will see.
I have started doing a test of my speed looking at the keyboard and achieved 54 words per minute at 98% accuracy, which was quite impressive. Consequently, I complete the first two lessons of the beginner course, which took me an hour and a half. These lessons motivated me to keep going through the next weeks, since I already began to have fluency at typing without looking at some keys.
August
This moth, I feel like I need to prove myself that I can replace my way of typing from looking at the keyboard to not looking. This will be a big step and a challenge, since at the moment, I only have 38 words per minute although at 97% accuracy.
During the four hour and a half sessions of the month, I pretty much finished all of the beginner course sections, going up to "period and comma" and only having two lessons left to finsih the course. I have noticed improvement in my typing speed, going up to 45 words per minute in some mini-lessons; however, I have decreased my typing accuracy, which has decreased my confidence.
Sincerely, I am not very motivated to keep going, since although I have clearly improved, these improvements are not sufficient to improve my productivity when typing. I will see if I finally catch on my typing skills during the next two last typing classes.
September
These will be the last two lessons of the beginner course I have enrolled in for this activity. I am not very confident on my results, but I will try my best to improve my typing as much as possible during these two last weeks.
These two last lessons, have been, by far, the most difficult and challenging of all. The lessons entailed using the farthest away keys very often in complicated combinations, which made my typing speed and accuracy plummet. My average typing speed for this month is a mere 31 words per minute and an accuracy of 89%. The overall averages for the entire course is a speed of 37 words per minute and an accuracy of 94%.
These results were quite depressing, and to be honest, it struck to experience a CAS activity did not produce benefitial results. Previously, I had gained something good from every experience, but not with this experience. At least, I have learned that typing by looking at the keyboard is not as bad as it seems, since it significantly increases typing speed and accuracy for the "average typer". However, if I ever require to write vast amounts of words, I think it will be best to have personalized classes from an experienced tutor rather than an online free website course.
