Software Review
Typing Pal Junior
By Laura Pretto

Any teacher worth their salt (and teaching a typing class) should definitely check out Typing Pal Junior. This comprehensive program is great for kids and helpful for adults as well. Anyone who would like to learn to type should check out this software.

Designed for children of ages 7 and up, its instructions are simple and direct, and the progress you make is based solely on how well you are learning. Unlike other typing-software (i.e. College Keyboarding and Document Processing for Windows, published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill), Typing Pal Junior does not allow you to continue to the next lesson until you have mastered the previous one.

Typing Pal Junior is engaging, helpful, and constructive. Your kids and/or students (and maybe you, too) will enjoy its two fun games: a Pong™ hybrid that helps you practice keying the right stroke while bouncing a ball around a square, and (I really enjoyed this one) a spaceship game where the pilot has to type out words in order to shoot asteroids. Each of these games are easy to play, but difficult to master, unless your typing skills are precise.

The software comes with lessons for each character on the keyboard, practice dictations, a journal to help keep track of the progress you have made, and a spy that follows your progress outside the program (in other word processors), not to mention a statistics file that measures each finger’s accuracy and a section on ergonomics (study of proper positioning of the body while interacting with a machine). Every part of the program is helpful; it is obvious the author(s) put a substantial amount of effort towards making this program interesting and entertaining for children, while still going through the learning process in a straightforward way.

Installing the program was quick and painless. The process takes less than two minutes. Running the program is a point and click away.#

Laura Pretto is an Education Update intern.