Keyboard Classroom

There have been a lot of articles written recently about the “Fluency” approach to teaching. Some criticize it, calling it robotic… that learning by rote or memorization isn’t really learning. We beg to differ.

You become fluent in something when you can do it almost subconsciously, that is, you don’t have to think about it. Educational experts have shown that when a student expends energy trying to decode words or sentences, he or she has difficulty with comprehension. Likewise, a child who cannot form or locate the letters on a keyboard will find composition almost impossible.

Typing skills are complex tasks but when broken down into sub-skills as we do with Keyboard Classroom, a learning disabled child can advance quickly. Once a sub-skill is mastered, the student moves up a level and is introduced to the next one, while practicing the one already mastered.

Practice should occur at least twice a day for just fifteen minutes each. Our studies have shown that this is sufficient to become a proficient typist in just 6 months. By that time, homework should become easier, note taking should become less of a chore (using a portable keyboard like an AlphaSmart), and above all, learning will become less of a chore.

Steve Shaw

More than ten years ago, my wife Carrie went to work for an incredibly talented educator by the name of Dr. Ian Spence at the Ben Bronz Academy in West Hartford, CT. Ben Bronz specializes in giving bright students with learning disabilities the study skills they need to succeed in the real world. Ian had found in several decades of research, that children with learning disabilities like ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome, Dyslexia, even some forms of Autism, were not incapable of learning in a mainstream environment, they just needed to “learn how to learn.”

Along with his wife Aileen, Ian built the school around an approach to learning called fluencies. A fluency is basically a timed exercise, repeated over and over again until the skill becomes second nature. Think of an athlete. Hitting a baseball, throwing a football, or kicking a soccer ball is effortless… a result of repeated practice. They perform basic skills naturally, without thinking.

Now apply it to a learning disabled child. If you can teach them a skill like touch typing where they don’t have to think about how hard to hold their pencil when they take notes, how to shape their letters correctly, or whether their writing is neat enough to be read, they can focus on the important stuff… learning!

Anyway, after ten years, Ian has allowed us to license his fluency-based learn to type computer program for children with learning disabilities, ages 8 to 14. It’s the only program of its kind anywhere. We’re calling it Keyboard Classroom and hope to be launching a web site, and making the product available for sale by the fall of 2008. We’ll keep you posted so check back here every few days.

Steve Shaw