Chris Wellons over at Null Program has an interesting post on High School students and how they lack a couple of basic computer skills that hamper their advancement in the subject. Wellons mentors students so he’s seen these problems first hand.
The first problem is that they have no notion of how files are stored or of file paths. That’s not too surprising given that devices like smart phones and tablets hide the notion of file and concentrate on the concept of application data instead.
It’s the second problem that resonated with me: students don’t know how to touch type. If you’re going to be a developer, this is a skill that can make a huge difference. It’s surprising how many “IT professionals” don’t touch type.
Back in the antediluvian days, High Schools offered a course called “Personal Typing.” It taught you enough basics to get you touch typing even if you weren’t up to secretarial speed standards. I don’t know if such courses are still offered but I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t. If you’re going to use up your electives on computer courses, you probably won’t have time for personal typing. Still, it seems worthwhile to me.
In these days when typing is rapidly replacing handwriting as a way of recording our thoughts, it seems to me that you’d want to be as efficient at it as possible. It’s fine to say—as I often have—that there’s no need to teach cursive handwriting because it’s mostly been replaced by typing but if you’re going to make that claim you should at least teach kids to be good at it.