I think learning how to type is an extremely important skill because now days, computers are a major tool in most job industries. Gavin has been sharpening his typing skills the last couple of weeks using the program Ultrakey Online Family Subscription from Bytes of Learning.
If you are not familiar with Ultrakey typing program, it is a completely online based program that uses voice instruction, animation, and video to teach the course. For the online family subscription option, you can choose from either a 3 user family, a 5 user family, or an 8 user family. It is priced based on the amount of users you choose from $29.95 to $49.95.
We have tried a few typing programs before and they worked for awhile, but Gav eventually became bored with them. Ultrakey is a program that I would say is no frills, but also not boring. Most of the programs Gav has used before just turn him off by becoming monotonous and blah. Ultrakey has just enough content to keep him interested in continuing to use it.
How does it work?
When we first got our log in information for the program, it was slightly confusing and overwhelming, but after reading through all of it, it all made sense.
Parents get a free account as to be able to manage the entire family, and this account does not count towards your users! Here the parent is able to enroll students, adjust settings, and set goals. You can also manage each student, adjust settings, monitor progress, produce reports and certificates plus more. There are a number of settings that you can tweak and set to each student, so it is very easy to customize.
When your student is all set to start, you will log in and come to your dashboard. The dashboard is clear and easy to navigate.
To get prepared for the course, Ultrakey will ask you to set a goal, or they will set one for you. The student is then given an opportunity to adjust settings to fit their liking by setting a different background picture, setting the keyboard display, and even how the hand display is set.
Also, as your student gets started, they will be taken through a series of Intro movies. These movies are very well animated and talk about things such as posture, how the fingers should be placed, how the lessons and skill checks work, and much more.
After the student has gone through the intro process, which I think is very well put together to get them started, they will start on the actual lessons. Home Row is the first lesson and they will move on through the remaining letters, and finally end with the numbers.
When a lesson is complete, the skill check is unlocked, and they have to complete that before continuing on to the next lesson. To me this is perfect for Gav because he can't move on until he's satisfied the skill check. This way he isn't overwhelmed, and trying to move on before he's ready to.
What did we think?
I honestly have to say that this is my favorite typing program that we have used, and I love how easy it is to customize it for your students. It is very thorough in teaching not only the letters on the keyboard, but how important it is to have good posture while sitting at the keyboard.
I would highly recommend checking out the Ultrakey Online Family Subscription from Bytes of Learning if you are in need of a stellar typing program for your family.
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