Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Learn To Type Week - Day 2

(interested in what all the fuss is about? Read the original post)

Good morning, everyone! I meant to have this up last night, but I misjudged my timing. Sorry to the people in Europe, already being long into the afternoon and all.

Day 2! I've been excited to see how much the response and participation from people for "Learn To Type" week. There are people who are trying to learn to touch-type for the first time, people working hard to overcome years of bad technique, people who are moving from QWERTY to Dvorak, and loads and loads of racing on typeracer.com. But remember it isn't about your speed, it is about your technique. Speed will come, but technique and form is what we are practicing. Of course, everyone needs fun, so we meet on typeracer for some balls-out typing competition.

What to do today?

I would recommend starting with a baseline on freetypinggame.net's 1-, 3- or 5-minute tests. Then, continue with the lessons you started yesterday.

If you have started some lessons, continue them. How are you feeling on the home row? Move on to the lessons that include other parts of the keyboard. I would recommend you keep on the path you started yesterday, as those lessons are built for incremental learning.

If you already touch-type, but are working on your form, then I highly recommend doing a few 5-minute tests on freetypinggame.net; I like the fairy tales. My goal this week is to make it all the way through #26: the cobbler and the elves (not to be confused with the keebler elves).

Don't forget to intersperse it with some fun. If you want to take a break, then head on over to typeracer.com. I'll be keeping the coreyhaines track open, so you should be able to use that as a primary meeting point if you want to race other "Learn To Type Week" participants. If you want to call some people into a game, you can post the shortened url http://vurl.me/TEL on twitter with the hashtag #learn2typewk; people might be up for a race. Otherwise, go on the open tracks and race away.

And remember, it isn't about where you are today (no cries of 'I Suck!'), but about where you will be soon (only cries of 'I'm getting better!').

Keep it up today!