Typing Fun

Once you have worked through the Keyboard Fun app or Type your children have all ready familiarised themselves with the alphabet, this is a good app to practice spellings and also to work on using the keyboard effectively and quickly.

This app measures the number of correct answers (spellings) that learners get as well as taking into account how fast they type!

Prior to starting, learners can set the keyboard to alphabetical or “QWERTY” mode in the “Settings “ section. The idea is to either practice with the order of the alphabet or to follow the traditional keyboard mode (you can also choose whether you would like to display the numbers or not).   The aim of the game is to type the word that appears on the screen so that learners get used to the keyboard. When each letter is typed,  a pre-recorded voice-over says the letter and a word that begins with the letter that the learner has just typed. This makes it easier to find the letter in the keyboard too. The mission is to spell out the same word as quickly as possible as the results are measuring how quickly the answer is displayed.  The idea is that children will, not only learn the spellings of words but, also practice how to type them out quickly.

We noticed that in the “Settings” section, you can change the spelling lists so that you either have the standard lists or you can type in your own.   This means you can create specific spelling lists each week.

We noticed that in “Settings” you are able to set the extent to which you want the app to help the learner or not. For example, you can decide whether you would like there to be an audio cue of the letters, whether you would like the pictures that associate with each letter to appear (e.g. Teddy for “T” and xylophone for “X”).  You can also turn on or off 'ignore errors'. Initially, the child can get success even if the hit the wrong keys. It will beep if the wrong key is pressed (or you can turn off the beep!) but it does not get put on the screen. Once they are progressing, you can turn off this feature, now if they type the wrong letter they must delete it to get success. These settings make the usage of the app harder or easier.

Words can be displayed in order or at random ('jump' button on screen).

A nice feature is that the keys on the keyboard can be coloured to make finding letters easier. They can be coloured by line, by fingering, or by left/right (in “Settings”)

 Overall,  we really enjoyed using the app.  It is very practical and the idea to get children learning the alphabet and spellings whilst also considering how to interact with the keyboard is ingenious. This is a jolly good app!