Nessy Fingers Touch Typing

content and design

Design and navigation

The program is well-designed and appealing to children, my classes had no difficulty finding their way around. It is easy to navigate from screen to screen and when moving around the home page a screen prompt tells you what can be accessed from that area. The program saves automatically when the children logout and if the program is installed on a network they can access their login from any computer. The main instructions are read but children need to read game instructions. Also available from the home page are the settings menu and the resources pages. Settings can be changed for individual users including the music and sounds played in the games, the colour and text types used, individual profiles and the word lists. The admin area, which is password protected, allows teachers to delete users. Feedback is given to the children in the form of trophies, medals and awards for winning games and achieving personal best scores in the Time Trials.

A very comprehensive user guide accompanies the program and is also available to download in PDF format. Installation instructions are clear and the program can be used on a stand-alone machine or a network.

Also included with Nessy fingers are printable support activities and games that can be used away from the keyboard to reinforce learning. There are suggestions on how to use the activities and Kung Fu warm up exercises to do before typing to warm up the fingers or when having a break.

Curriculum coverage

This program doesn't cover a particular area of the curriculum, but with the continuing use of computers in the classroom it is important that children learn to type correctly at an early age. The Primary Framework for Literacy suggests that a typing tutor should be used to develop manual dexterity and keyboard fluency in writing. Nessy Fingers is an ideal program to use for this purpose. Word lists used in the games cover the UK curriculum and include cvc words, homophones, different vowel sounds and silent letters. They can be edited to help with spelling. The older children were quite happy typing in three letter words when they were first using the program and were more concerned with improving their speed than what they were typing.

Planning

It is a good idea to trial the program before using it with children, as although it is easy to use, you need to know how to play the games and the best order to complete the lessons. It is quite easy for children to wander from the main learning to type exercises to the games before learning how to type the letters. I suggest showing younger children the programs on an interactive whiteboard or projector before letting them use the program, to guide them on where to start and how to proceed. As the instructions on the games are not narrated these could also be demonstrated in advance to show the children what they have to do. There are also resource sheets that can be used away from the keyboard and warm up exercises to use before typing. Custom word lists can be generated from the Word Generator, which accompanies the program.