Re: Educational texts - written language teaching

[Michael A Hamblin <michaelh@utdallas.edu>]

On Sat, 1 May 1999, Fredrik Liljegren wrote:

> > One way I've thought about to help this would be to alphabetize the 
> > keyboard.  I don't know how to do the labeling -- stickers?  
> 
> Well, that's an idea.  As you say, it can make it harder to learn
> normal writing later.  A dust-cover is otherwise a good idea,
> stickers wouldn't be good, it has to be removable.

I think that by saying that it might be harder to learn normal writing, 
you're making a bit of an assumption here. If I'm understanding correctly,
you are concerned that the kids could get used to an ABC keyboard layout
and could be difficult to learn QWERT later on. I don't think that would
be that big of a deal since the point of an ABC layout is to make
hunt-and-peck easier (watch a kid as his moves his finger across each key
on an ABC keyboard, saying each one aloud until he finds the one he's
looking for). Certainly if the kids were spending several hours each day
on the computer this would be a problem, but somehow I doubt they would be
willing to sit that long :) But at least with an ABC layout, they probably
won't become any more comfortable with the keyboard, but they would become
more comfortable with the computer.

2 cents :)

--
Michael Hamblin            http://www.utdallas.edu/~michaelh/
michaelh@utdallas.edu      http://www.ductape.net/
UTD Linux User Group       Engineering and Computer Science Support x2997