Learning Copy Typing Still Has Value In This Very Commercial World

by Robert, posted in E-Learning

I remember my typing and secretarial classes at school – quite a few moons ago now.  Things were definitely done a completely different way then.  We had plenty of teachers and they knew how to control a class – looking back on those few years, I can see how lucky I was to be schooled in the old way.  Knowing boundaries and have clear guidelines of the teacher’s expectations of me counted for a lot.  I’m not sure I would have had the self discipline to buckle down and work in the same way today’s student has to.  There is a greater emphasis on working at home, with laptop logged onto the school system.  Independence is being drummed into the student.

Our typing and secretarial lessons were very much tutor led.   Mrs H would contenance no cheating – we had to learn to type without looking at either the keyboard or the resultant words on the page.  Of course we did not have a screen in front of us – it was paper coming out of the typewriter roller.  The art of copy typing is one that has died out, any tom, dick or harry can stab away with two fingers darting across the keyboard of their laptop and think they’re typing.  But there is so much more to getting those words down on a page or message!  For someone to be totally successful in the world of typing for any commercial venture is to learn to copy type.  That is to know the qwerty keyboard off by heart and to take lessons on English grammar, vocabulary and most importantly – knowing punctuation and its uses.  All these are taught in e-learning courses.

Old Fashioned Typing Speed Training & Methods

by Tariq Bitar, posted in Online Courses, VLE Software

Just seeing this on-page image reminds me of some very early distance learning from many years ago.  It involved typewriting, not just typing a few letters here and there.  No, this was very serious stuff that helped the student to pick up fantastic speeds and accuracy over several weeks of tutoring via headphones from taped lessons, or even live broadcasts on a particular radio channel.   The drawback to the latter was the speed was set and you had no way of slowing the tutor down – if you missed a bit, you had to skip ahead to catch up on the lesson, with no form of catching up on the lost section.    At least with a tape recorded lesson, you could wind it back to the lost spots – I used to prefer this method, although it seemed very old and clunky compared to audio typing which became my absolute favourite of these dark arts!   Audio involved the supply of headphone attached to foot pedals.  These pedals were operated by taping buttons with one’s toes.  I believe left was ‘stop go back’ middle was ‘stop’ and right was go ahead and keep going until the end.  You could go back and listen as many times as you needed but this did defeat the object of learning to type as accuraely as physically possible.

 

Organising A Scheme to Make The Most Of All That Study Time

by Tariq Bitar, posted in Online Courses

Whatever our career choices in life, there is going to be a big period in which we need to buckle down and train for it.  No one can just walk into a high flying lawyer position without taking years at law school first.  The same for being a doctor – severn or eight years at medical school is the minimum now.  For every situation where study is needed, there are ways and means of ensuring all that effort is rewarded with best possible results.  Taking additional, top up online courses relative to your chosen subject is a first class way to enhance the existing learning scheme.  Taking time to work out a study programme you can continue at home – taking into account all the various work sreams and co-0rdinating efforts to ensure everything makes sense when it comes to those final exams or even the intermediary ones.  Taking stock of what is actually being asked of you is one of the hardest challenges for the older student who may have been out in the work place for years and not been in the habit of sitting in a learning environment.   Students leaving school will have had study periods drummed into them from very early on as this is how the british education system works.  It still needs organisation and dedication to put those exam results to good use.