Teach the kids to type
One of the most useful skills you can impart to your children is the ability to touch type. Once they get the hang of it, it will stand them in good stead throughout their school life and beyond to the workplace.
A quite cool little freeware program that will transform your little ‘hunters and peckers’ into speedy touch typists is Rapid Typing Tutor. It’s just as suitable for adults wanting to sharpen their keyboard skills, but its bright interface and engaging lessons make it particularly appealing to kids.
The Rapid Typing Tutor site also has entertaining typing games for the kids, lets users take a typing speed test online with the chance of making it onto the champions board, and generously provides links to its pick of the eight best other free typing tutor programs.
The Rapid Typing tutor software lets you choose from a range of keyboard layouts, displays onscreen animations of correct technique to illustrate each lesson, features colourful graphics, tracks your progress, and supports individual settings for multiple users.
Gail Lipscombe has worked for some of Australia's hottest tech magazines for over 10 years. In her blog, she focuses on demystifying technology, gadgets and the web for average consumers.