While setting up proper email addresses and teaching students how to save documents were very simple, typing wasn't going to be something that students learned over night as a bit more time would need to be dedicated in order for students to get better at the activity. Of course the idea of this was not at all appealing to students, but once I told them how much typing you would have to do in college or how much any job relies on computers, students started to realize the importance of the lesson. I also realized that this couldn't be condense into one lesson plan and that this would need a few days while making sure to revisit this concept later on in the semester. As a result, students were given three days last week to work on their typing skills with the main focus being word count and accuracy.
While there is a simple chrome extension that you can use titled Typing Club, luckily Tri-County offers a semester of a writing class virtually. With the help of my mentor teacher we were able to trim this semester course down into three days while still being able to focus on the main components of typing. At the end of the three day students were given a test to see if they had improved at all from the three days of typing skills.
Again, while three days is nowhere near enough for students to make significant improvements to their typing perhaps it will inspire in them the idea to become more proficient in typing. Furthermore, we will return this platform a few times throughout so hopefully with the combination of this tool as well as some of the assignments students will do online in the future these aspects will lead to students improving their typing skills. I think students overall did very well simply of the fact that we were able to track their results online and we were seeing signs of progress.
