PORTLAND, ORE. MAY 16, 2017
Many school leaders are realizing that while today’s students may be adept at swiping and texting, keyboarding is an essential skill needed for success in school and today’s workplace. To help close the keyboarding skills gap, ed tech company, Learning.com, today announced its Next Generation Adaptive Keyboarding solution, a comprehensive digital application designed to help students develop accuracy and speed on the keyboard through independent practice.
This new application is an update of EasyTech’s Prescriptive Keyboarding solution and is illustrative of Learning.com’s commitment to providing tools that help students and teachers excel in a digital world. It features updated technology, including a transition from Flash to HTML5, and offers intuitive, role-based user interfaces along with a modern design for higher engagement and ease of use.
“For digital natives, who’ve grown up with digital devices glued to their hands, typing and keyboarding have been replaced by swiping and emojis, leaving many students without the technology skills necessary to succeed in school, college and careers,” said Learning.com CEO Keith Oelrich. “Our keyboarding lessons and adaptive keyboarding practice environment provide a fun and engaging way to close that critical skill gap.”
As a pre-cursor to independent practice, the new guided practice curriculum launches a module that directs students through such keyboarding basics as home row and upper row to ensure proper technique within those skill areas.
The Great Keyboarding Adventure for elementary students and The Urban Keyboarding Explorer for middle school help students understand that through developing keyboarding skills, they can open their interconnected world. Students complete a series of prescriptive pathways within these worlds that adapt as they complete a combination of keyboarding practices, demonstrating improvements toward accuracy and speed goals. Students earn badges along the way as they complete formative assessments, exercises, and skill and story challenges, while the prescriptive engine recommends personalized exercises adapted to each student’s individual needs.
Customization tools are available for teachers and students, including the ability to set class and individual student speed and accuracy target goals, set practice minutes required to proceed to keyboarding game play, and visual and auditory cue settings for personalized and empowered learning. Teacher dashboards provide snapshots of class and student performance data including accuracy and words-per-minute growth over time, time spent on keyboarding practice, and accuracy by key. Teachers can run class or individual student reports to identify trends to adjust instruction accordingly. Students also have a dashboard that they can review to take an active role in their learning.
Finger placement and proper ergonomic reinforcement aids provide students with instinctive visual cues to guide them to the appropriate finger location. Teachers will also be able to develop their own guided practices by inserting text related to current events, the week’s spelling words or keyboarding content specifically for English Language Learners.
About Learning.com
Founded in 1999, Learning.com currently partners with one in six school districts and serves five million students nationwide. Learning.com provides K-12 solutions to help students, teachers, and schools excel in a digital world. Districts equip their students with the technology and 21st century skills needed for success on online assessments, college, and the workforce using Learning.com’s digital literacy solutions. Learning.com’s digital content tools help districts build and share custom digital curriculum helping them meet their instructional goals, facilitate personalized learning, and address budget challenges. Through implementation services and professional development, Learning.com serves educators as they integrate technology and digital content into instruction
Learning.com Team
Staff Writers
Founded in 1999, Learning.com provides educators with solutions to prepare their students with critical digital skills. Our web-based curriculum for grades K-12 engages students as they learn keyboarding, online safety, applied productivity tools, computational thinking, coding and more.
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