On 23 September 2014 16:41, Bruce Johnson <johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

On Sep 22, 2014, at 4:52 PM, Freelance Traveller <editor@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:

> This is a perfect illustration of what I mean above - sure, you can be
> 99% accurate in depressing keys on a keyboard, but could that program
> detect whether or not you were using the 'correct' fingers on the
> 'correct' keys, or did it merely detect that the 'correct' key was
> depressed when it was expected?

Well, that’s kind of irrelevant. The aim in teaching a muscle-memory based skill like typing is speed and accuracy. The conventional way has proven to be the most ‘efficient’ given that the qwerty keyboard was designed to slow typists down, so the presumption is that the ‘right’ fingers are being used if the marks used to test this are being hit.

Also the earliest lessons are oriented around getting the fingers placed correctly,

Yep, that was definitely true.

so if those parts have been passed satisfactorily, the presumption is that if the student is hitting the speed and accuracy benchmarks, the technique is correct.

I think so. The more I think about it, the more I have vague memories of it 'knowing' that I was doing it incorrectly. Although I could be mistaken.

Timothy COULD be the world’s fastest two-fingered typist,

LOL!

One of the things I looked forward to with iOS 8 was the arrival of 'other' (non-Apple) keyboards such as Swiftkey. I understood the latter would allow me to 'slide type' when I'm lying in bed holding the iPad with one hand and 'typing' with the other. I'm not too shabby with one hand like that, but reckon I can go faster with slide typing having messed with a bit on an Android device.

However, having upgraded to iOS 8 and installed Swiftkey, I don't seem to be able to slide type. Anyone know why? (I appreciate it's a bit off topic but my query on Twitter elicited exactly zero responses...)

and the training program wouldn’t know, but it wouldn’t care, because it’s job was to teach him to type accurately and fast.

I reckon it did a good job of that.

Interestingly I had friends who were also taking the 'course' who were dissatisfied with their certificates at the end due to the level of accuracy (or speed or both). So they'd redo the thing just to get a better result! If there was a limit on how many times you could do it, I don't think they hit it!