Here at Turn IT On consultants are always discussing the best ways to teach children IT skills, suggesting and sharing the software and programmes they have tried and tested to enable other consultants to bring the ideas into new schools. With so many alternatives for every activity available across the internet, some free and some costly, it is invaluable to have recommendations from other members of the team to help consultants make the best choice.

Recently Touch Typing has been an area consultants have been discussing, in particular software suited for the SEN students.

The Top Three recommendations for free online and downloadable Touch Typing software are…

BBC Bitesize – Dancemat Typing.

This free online game has four levels, each divided into three stages which begins by teaching the home keys and introduces new letters in each stage in fun interactive animated games.  The game allows you to test your typing speed at the end of each level to see your progress!

Rapid Typing

This is a free downloadable course, suitable for all levels of expertise to help you develop your touch typing skills. The introductory course is perfect for the first time you use the keyboard, the beginner course then enhances this understanding to help users learn the positions of all keys on the keyboard. The Advanced course helps to improve your typing speed and the Expert course develops the skills further by typing actual text. During the course a virtual keyboard and moving hands are shown on screen to simplify the typing lessons. Rapid typing is suitable to be used in the classroom, with the option to set the difficulty for each student and observe their progress as well as creating lesson plans and your own activities within the software.

Doorway Online

This is a website that offers a collection of free learning activities that develop a range of skills including touch typing. There are a number of exercises in five categories: Literacy; Number; Time and Money; Typing and Touch Typing; and Memory, Matching and Targeting. The difficulty of the activity can be selected before each session making the activities suited across the class. All the activities are free and suited for use on either interactive whiteboards or individual computers, all that is needed is an internet connection.

Do you have any touch typing software you would recommend? Tweet us your suggestions @TurnITOnSupport!