Why should kids learn to touch type?

Contrary to popular belief, typing isn’t yet an outdated practice. In fact, it offers quite a few valuable life skills. In today’s technology driven world, it has kind of become imperative to become an efficient typist, because while parents depend on smartphones and laptops for their work, children too depend on these gadgets for their online learning. Thus, it has become important to teach your school kid some basic typing and help him with his assignments, projects and presentations. Experts say that just 20 minutes of daily practice is enough to make any child a fluent touch-typist in less than 3 months. Here are the reasons why confident and fast typing skills, are essential for your youngsters.  

Improves speed 
When someone keeps shifting between looking at the keyboard and looking at the screen, a lot of time is wasted, with the brain trying to adjust both the things simultaneously. This is why learning the art of touch-typing will enable your kids to work at a better speed and with greater perfection. It will make them time efficient. As a result, kids who are skilled typists will produce twice the amount of work in comparison to the ones who struggle at it. Moreover, they must understand that typing correctly is as important as typing quick.  

Prepares kids for high school and beyond 
Touch typing may seem like the skill of a mature, grown-up person, and rightly so. However, if children learn it right from their elementary or middle school, by the time they reach high school, they become experts. Their hands get accustomed to the keyboard, can concentrate better on typing and are more motivated to work on the computers. In recent times, most high school work and assignments comprise of long essays that need to be typed and submitted. The same thing happens in universities at a greater level and thereafter, in all kinds of professions. This is why the earlier kids learn to type efficiently, the more benefits will they reap in high school and beyond. 

Helps kids to focus 
Evidence shows that learning to touch type massively helps children who have a hard time concentrating or while doing extracurricular activities. These students find typing more helpful than writing by hand, as the feature of pressing key enables them to learn and manage complex words. In fact, typing appeals the senses, helping the children get used to letter patterns. But parents must remember not to go overboard. The key is to do a little bit every day.  

Enhances the quality of work 
Learning how to efficiently touch type not only helps to speed things up but also produces quality content. The reason behind this is that, typing after a point becomes a subconscious habit, enabling kids to shift their attention more on the quality of the work they are doing. Typing gives kids more than one opportunity to get things right, which in turn affects the quality of the work. 

Improves handwriting 
As improbable as it may seem, typing on the computer means getting numerous attempts at writing something which improves muscle tone and dexterity. This results in improved handwriting and also reduces the risk of RSI or repetitive strain injury.