Computers

Comuters are useful, fun, exciting, but they can be a scary place. Chcek out these cool links to keep you and your friends safe on the internet!

https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/resourcedocs/internet_safe/

https://cybertip.ca/app/en/inet_safe_overview

https://www.loveourchildrenusa.org/parent_internetsafety.php

I especially recommend:   https://www.netsmartz.org/index.aspx

Want to learn how to type faster?

Learn How to Type Faster With These 5 Pointers

I haven’t been practicing lately so I only top out at about 95wpm (words per minute), but with continued training it is fully possible to kick your typing speed up to 160wpm or even higher. Why am I mentioning these speeds? Because the average person’s handwriting speed is somewhere around 25-35wpm where the words are short and speed is at the maximum. I only write 20wpm by pencil so when I’m typing, the advantage is pretty obvious.

Here is how you can learn to type fast:

¹ Learn the Layout

The primary reason why it takes a long time to punch the right key is that you have to find the right button. Memorize the positions of the keys. Be able to close your eyes and visualize every letter, number, and symbol on the keyboard. If you can do that, then when you are typing, you are not searching for the keys but instead pushing them.

² Put your hands in the ‘Home’ position

Notice how the ‘F’ and ‘J’ buttons on your keyboard have a special groove on them. Put the index(pointing) finger of your left hand on the ‘F’ and the three fingers left of the index finger on ‘D’, ‘S’, and ‘A’. Now put your right hand’s index finger on the ‘J’, and the other three fingers to the right of it on ‘K’, ‘L’, and ‘;’. Rest both of your thumbs on the ‘spacebar’. Feel the grooves of the ‘F’ and ‘J’ buttons under your index fingers. Your hands are now in the home position. This is the centered position which puts your fingers equally distant to all the keys so that you can type better.

The keyboard was designed to be used this way. The grooves on ‘F’ and ‘J’ are there so that you can find the home position without looking at the keyboard. Try it now. Tilt your head upward so that you see the monitor but not the keyboard at all. Now take your hands off of the keyboard. Feel the keyboard with your fingers until you get your index fingers back on the grooves and your other fingers are on the keys described just previously. Practice this several times. You are only tilting your head up temporarily to prevent you from cheating and looking at the keyboard. When you look at the keyboard, you are cheating yourself and losing your own time because you are relying on your eyes finding the key (slow) rather than using your memory to know where the key is (fast).

³ Practice

Now that you know where to start your hands from and where all of the keys are by memory, you can type without looking at the keyboard. When you get better at typing, and have reaffirmed the positions of the keys into your fingers, you do not even need to look at the monitor to see if you typed the right thing. This frees up your eyes to look at the sheet of paper you are transcribing, to a book you want an excerpt out of, or even the ability to talk to someone while looking at them and taking notes at the same time. The possibilities are endless. However, you cannot expect speed just from thought alone. Your fingers are not used to moving in these ways and need practice.

When you are first learning, say the letters of the word you are typing one at a time and concentrate on where you should move which finger to get to it. You should not need to look at the keyboard to do this. If you find it hard to remember the layout of your keyboard, there’s a link at the end of this article to a site where you can get a ready-made keyboard layout. Just print it out and follow the included instructions to make it stand upright. This isn’t a permanent solution though. It’s just for when you’re learning it.

Eventually you will want to go entirely by memory. I can recommend two ways to improve your memory of the keys. The first is the way I did it, and that’s through TONS of practice. It’s not that hard, but it takes some time. The other way, you might be able to accelerate your learning curve by improving your memory first.