There is research on this. Check out this guy, who has made keyboarding research his career: http://keyboarding.wordpress.com/ He is a professor in Iowa and is the chief researcher behind Sunburst’s Type-to-Learn software (not, in my opinion, the greatest software out there, but it is better than most keyboarding software programs).

When I ask my juniors and seniors in high schools how they would react if we dropped our keyboarding class – they all protest. They say learning how to keyboard is the best thing they learned in the technology class.

I would like to see research on this topic.

I watch my husband hunt and peck with 2 fingers – he still doesn’t know where the keys are. How inefficient. I do think eventually we will be moving to voice input – which we have now – but the software is outrageously expensive.

By both hands I mean having both hands on the keyboard….but using only one or two fingers. We’re not using home run keys we’re just getting use to having both hands on the keyboard at the same time, even if it’s only one finger at least they’re getting both hands working in unison. By 4th grade they then should have those pathways in their brain formed making it easier to “type properly” if that is the way the school decided to go. Or so is my thinking.

As part of the keyboarding curriculum, all parents were requested to purchase keyboarding software for home practice. Any new students coming to the school in 4th and 5th grade would be on their own to use their software programs at home.

As for having the students keyboarding at an earlier age, they definitely would get time in the lower primary as workstations and laptops were plentiful and widely used.

And you have an interesting idea with the cursive writing being picked up in art. I don’t think our art teachers would smile very much on that idea. I would be interested to hear what elementary teachers think about the importance of handwriting in our digital world.