ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ARLINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Now is the tyme (SPELL CHECK) time for all good typing teachers to vome (SPELL CHECK) come to the aid of the computer generation. (RETURN)(TAB).
Typing classes used to be filled with girls who wanted to become secretaries. But as computers become as commonplace in people's lives as television sets, keyboarding skills are in demand in all walks of life.
Typing, once an elective high school vocational course, is now as basic to elementary school curriculum as handwriting. The Arlington schools have made typing courses mandatory for third-graders, and soon all Virginia schools may have to follow suit.
Virginia's new statewide standards of learning, approved by the General Assembly last year, require that fifth-graders have basic keyboarding skills.
By the time pupils have reached the third grade, most have developed enough dexterity to type, said Mary Ellen Mehler, business and marketing education supervisor for Arlington schools.
The main goal of Arlington's keyboarding program is to help third-graders improve their writing skills. Pupils can edit, spell and rearrange text more easily on the computer, she said.
``It just encourages the writing process to be able to use the capabilities of a word processing program,'' she said. ``It takes a lot of the tedium and frustration out of writing.''
She said she hopes the pupils will learn to type faster than they write. The typical third-grader writes about eight words a minute, Mehler said.
The speed of keyboarding is part of its appeal, said Shetal Trehan, 8, a third-grader at Barrett Elementary School.
``When you grow up, you will know what letter will be what, and you will know how to type really fast,'' Shetal said as she typed the words ``well tell bell fell.''
Another pupil, Celvin Sanchez, 8, said he prefers typing to writing.
``Whenever you write, your hand gets tired,'' he said. If he learns to type well, he said, he might be able to get a job at AT&T or Bell Atlantic.
The children work their way through a keyboarding tutorial software program without step-by-step instructions from their teacher. Wednesday, teacher Jennifer Holsinger spent most of her time circling the room, occasionally reminding the youngsters to put their hands on home row and keep their wrists up. Holsinger is their regular classroom teacher, not a keyboarding specialist.
Schools should teach keyboarding to young children using computers so they don't develop bad typing habits, said Gary McLean, professor of business and industry education at the University of Minnesota. But he said that elementary courses often are taught by teachers who have little training in keyboarding pedagogy.
``Teachers are thrown into the classroom and told to teach keyboarding, and they don't have a clue how to do it,'' he said. ``It's not unusual to have someone who can't even keyboard him or herself doing the instruction.''
Mehler said Arlington has tried to solve that problem by developing training sessions for teachers. Holsinger said the youngsters, with occasional reminders to keep their eyes on the screen, have picked up keyboarding well on their own.
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