If I have one claim to fame, it is that I can type amazingly well. I taught students to keyboard for over 15 years and meet several students today that say that these skills are serving them well. However, as we progress in technology and many students are teaching themeslves to type (keyboard), we are seeing less students with good skills. They have already developed many bad hunt-and-peck habits that are hard to break because that method is adequate for their needs. They are resistant to change. Today's tool is another reason many of them feel touch keyboarding skills are not necessary.
Most students have a smart phone or a tablet. When they open notepad, or even a google doc in the docs app, the keyboard automatically appears. Immediately left of the space bar, is a microphone. Many students, whose keyboarding skill is not up to par, can easily tap the microphone and start speaking what they would like to type (write). Try it out for yourself. I find that it works very well and understands a variety of voices. It even lets you add punctuation. Personally, I discovered that I can think and type easier than I can think and speak. Some people have shared with me that they are not composition typists at all. Thought composition skills are something we should focus on for our students. Good communication skills to compose, speak and present and/or type (key) may be one of the most important skills we can help children develop.
Since I have shared this tool with many people, several have asked about a microphone for chromebooks. Good NEWS! There is now an add-on with Google docs called speech recognition. To me, it doesn't understand and translate quite as well as the microphone on a tablet or phone, but still works very well.
Try out both of these tools and share your results and thoughts in the comments. It's not what you know, it's what you SHARE!
