keyboarding.jpg

Lots of Oregon schools, including some in the Portland and David Douglas school districts, plan to introduce formal typing lessons and drag-n-drop practice sessions for 8- and 9-year-olds this year.

Why? The debut of the Smarter Balanced test.

It turns out that to succeed on that challenging new test that Oregon students as young as third grade will take beginning this spring, students need to know how to type on a keyboard and drag and drop using a computer mouse.

But in the increasingly swipe-and-tap world of phones and tablets, plenty of students who took the practice test last spring got hung up by the typing demands and drop-n-drag function.

"We were surprised by students who were challenged at the third-grade level by some of the tasks that were technology-related," said Portland Assistant Superintendent Melissa Goff.

State officials asked for feedback from teachers and students who took part in the practice test and got three loud answers. One of them, Oregon testing director Derek Brown said, was this:

"We need to provide students in grades three through five with as much practice as possible in typing. They need more opportunities to work with a keyboard and a mouse during those grades."

Oregon's old reading and math tests were given on computer, just like Smarter Balanced will be. But because the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or OAKS, was all multiple-choice, students only had to click one of four possible answers to each question -- something all students could do.

Smarter Balanced asks students to type in short answers. And, in both reading and math in every grade level, it asks them to type out a long response to a complex assignment, one that is expected to take more than an hour and run for many paragraphs.

Students who are hunting for each letter on an unfamiliar keyboard aren't on a level playing field with those who've done a lot of typing.

"Keyboarding is going to be enormous," says Brooke O'Neill, curriculum director in David Douglas. "That is the feedback we have heard from students."

That's why Tim Lauer, principal of Lewis Elementary in Southeast Portland, has made sure to load TypingClub software into every Lewis student's Google Apps account. Students will get time to practice typing at school -- and they can also log into the program on any computer, at home, a library or elsewhere.

"That way, it's "At my uncle's house this weekend, I can do my typing practice,'"Lauer said.

In David Douglas, Type to Learn is so far the software of choice. Students have been able to use it to learn and practice during their time in the computer lab each week, O'Neill said. But in the face of Smarter Balanced demands, that is not enough -- especially for students who don't have a computer with a keyboard at home. That's true for many if not most students in her district in the eastern stretches of the city of Portland, where three-fourths of the students are low-income.

"They need to be able to drag and drop. They need to be able to type. And we need to make our approach to teaching that more structured and intentional. 'These are the lessons you should do' and when," she said

Most Oregon schools have been teaching for a year or two to the Common Core State Standards, which set out what skills schools should teach in reading and writing in each grade.

"'Compose and type a paper in one sitting' is one of the Common Core standards, and we have put that on our students' report cards," O'Neill said. "But we need to be mindful and intentional about teaching keyboarding from kindergarten on up."

-- Betsy Hammond