My first introduction to typing was in 6th grade when we took out time once a week for about 6 weeks to use these special typing machines. We worked through basic excercises on them, but we weren’t expected to make any kind of progress and I never remember being graded. It was more just to familiarize ourselves with a keyboard and how keys were laid out.
Strangely, I hardly recieved any further typing training until I was a freshman in high school. Ahhh, General Business. While the class had some very vaild goals and intentions, it failed to meet those goals and intentions in practice. From what I remember there were a lot of simple excercises in typing which essentially entailed copying forms, letters, and other excercises. We were expected to complete a few each day. After you finished your required work, you could do whatever you wanted. This class also tried to teach a few life lessons in business like how to balance a check book. None of this, I remember, was ever a very serious attempt at education.
Part of why I never found the class that useful was because I’d already learned to type. None of the classroom time I’d ever spent on typing previously quite got my attention like instant messaging and chat rooms. Once I got a computer at home (in 7th grade), I remember spending a good portion of our dialup hours chatting with friends on IM or talking to random people in chat rooms. Both of those require at least some familiarity with the keyboard in order to use them. What’s interesting is they become much more like face to face conversation when you can actually type with some speed. Naturally, my technique wasn’t perfect, but I got the job done. The more I used those services, the better and faster I got. To this day I still don’t use correct typing methods. My fingers don’t stay on the home row like their supposed to; they’re flying arround all over. I use my pinky fingers much less than I actually should. Yet, somehow I manage. I’d even go so far as to say I’m faster than a majority of typers.
