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A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

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Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#321

Post by geomark »

sundvor wrote: post #254
nickserv wrote: post #9

Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet. I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces. Also, learning to use a keyboar…

Interesting. I didn't quite realise it but these may be important computer literacy advantages we can pass on to our children. Also noting we're typing in English here on a Latin keyboard, however my 7y son's taken to his keyboard like a duck to water. We gave him a touch typing challenge to plant some seeds, and he greatly enjoyed it. I benefit every day from touch typing and want him to have the same advantage - I…

Can you point me to that touch typing challenge that your 7 year old enjoyed? Very pertinent to my interests.

Also, Python at age 7 seems pretty advanced. My 7 year old is pretty strong with block-based programming but I'm still trying to figure out when and how to transition to real coding.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#322

Post by kashyapc »

ImaCake wrote: post #300
kashyapc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other week my Dutch language teacher (he's ~55) wrote an email "I would like to try Linux, can you please assist?" after learning about what is open source and libre software. I was pleasantly surprised to receive his email. So last week I went to install Fedora 28 on his new laptop. It all went smoothly. No, that's a lie; I had to do a little scary command-line surgery while he watched me do it (and heard me ass…

Maybe Ubuntu would be more appropiate as a first time distro? I use Ubuntu because I end up frustrated having to google a million issues whenever I use any other linux distro. I grew up on windows desktop and can't really see any but the most determined ipad user from sticking with ubuntu let alone anything else.

I considered it, but Fedora is the beast I know for ~10 years, and I could debug it more confidently if something breaks (and I know I'll inevitably be called for tech support). Also, I've had "great success" with Fedora on my Father's (age: 67) desktop for already 3+ years; so I "built on top of that".

My professor's use cases are quite simple: writing articles in Libre Office (he's already familiar with it on Winblows), YouTube, and a browser—only one tab at a time; he was blissfully unaware of the concept of tabs until we walked through it!

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#323

Post by sergiosgc »

lstodd wrote: post #263
rococode wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I type ~140 and there are definitely situations where you feel a desire for higher WPM. Informal writing is the most common one - for example, with this comment I'm basically just typing out what I'm thinking and it reads more like a conversation than a well-planned chunk of text. I'm going nearly full-speed because, like most people in the world, I can compose casual sentences in my head much faster than…

well, I'm sorry, but that seems like too many words for the idea you expressed in them. maybe it's just me, but at least sometimes brevity pays off.

Written text is condensed. It takes more time to idealize a good paragraph for a written text than the equivalent for conversation. This extra time is used to sort the logic of the text, reducing redundancy in the process.

The parent comment does sound like verbal communication. Even so, I understand the point. I type 120wpm and, when writing, I form paragraphs mentally, then dump them via keyboard. If this second phase could be faster, I'd write faster.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#324

Post by Razengan »

carindistory wrote: post #142
jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

As a Japanese native speaker who has to enter many Japanese texts on a daily basis both on a PC and on a smartphone, I feel obliged to point out that the quality of an IME (a piece of software providing possible kanji/alphabet sequences for a given phonetic relization), is far better on a PC (its built-in MS-IME, to be precise) than on a smartphone (iOS). I started looking for some example to show how bad iOS's IME i…

If you have also tried the Japanese IME on macOS, how does it compare to the Windows version in your opinion?

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#325

Post by ForRealsies »

WalterBright wrote: post #208
laurieg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely a big factor. When you look at a Japanese computer keyboard [1] you might see lots of Japanese characters on the keys. Almost nobody actually uses these to type. Instead, if you want a か(ka) character then you type k,a on the familiar qwerty keys. These phonetic characters then get converted into the more complex Chinese-origin characters as you go along, allowing you to disambiguate homophones. Th…

> Cast your mind back to when you first encountered a computer keyboard. Does an IBM cardpunch keyboard count? :-) Anyhow, I took a 2 week class in 8th grade to learn to touch type on a mechanical typewriter. It's paid off handsomely ever since.

r/gatekeeping

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#326

Post by mathw »

rjplatte wrote: post #289
Crespyl wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known an english variant of the "flick" keyboard (MessageEase) since my first smartphone. I find the flick/tap-and-drag gestures to be vastly more comfortable and natural than trying to use my thumbs to peck at a QWERTY soft keyboard and relying on predictive algorithms to make up the speed loss. An additional benefit is that this approach provides more room for additional symbols and layers that are more of a b…

Holy Crap. MessageEase is the keyboard I didn't know I wanted. It's like Minuum but smarter. <3

I've used MessageEase for years now on Android and it was really worth the time investment. I only switch back to Gboard occasionally to get at its far superior emoji input system, but I don't use a lot of emoji in most of my text entry so that's not a massive deal. I can type accurately without having to wrestle with autocorrect all the time, and that'll do for me! And although the letter frequency distribution isn't right, I can happily use it to enter German and Lojban and Welsh on the occasions when I want to use those on my phone.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#327

Post by kps »

innocenat wrote: post #92
jdietrich wrote: post #45

It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME. The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and…

That's why it's so sad this[0] 2016 Google April's Fool stays an April's Fool 0: https://www.google.co.jp/ime/furikku/

Seems like a DataHand would work well for Japanese.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#328

Post by IggleSniggle »

jpatokal wrote: post #301
skgoa wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in Sumeria they used to go on and on about how this newfangled writing thing would destroy civilization because it took the personal element out of interpersonal communication. I remember reading an old rant by someone (I want to say letter sent to a newspaper) who complained that the grammophone will destroy music.

In a sense it did: I'd wager that being able to play an instrument or sing well is rarer these days than it was before the gramophone. That said, I'll still take Spotify and access to all the music in the world over random neighbors playing the fiddle any day.

Not me! Sometimes, but not every time.

I grew up in a family of musicians and I really miss the social element of just plunking down next to someone to share in performing a song. Closest experience I’ve had to it is couch multiplayer video games, but it’s still not the same. Still do see the occasional person with a guitar on the porch, but I can’t help but think it would a lot more common and a lot more fun without recorded music.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#329

Post by zencash »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #155
zencash wrote: post #137

I think it will take time, keyboard, when first encounters can be hard to use, saying that, younger people these days have access to a keyboard almost 24/7 whether it be iPads or mobiles that they use. I'd like to see how kids of this generation can manage using a franking machine [1] or even a photocopier. Our currently generation 25-40 used floppy disks at some point, now it's just an icon on your software suite [2…

> now it's just an icon on your software suite I’m trying to remember the last time I saw this icon. Either what I’m working on has “save” as text, is constantly auto-saved or requires Ctrl-S.

I guess this is true too, we're moving so fast with software.

A few programes here and there do still utilize a floppy disk as a mark to save something though.

Re: A new digital divide: Young people who can’t use keyboards

#330

Post by sundvor »

geomark wrote: post #321
sundvor wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I didn't quite realise it but these may be important computer literacy advantages we can pass on to our children. Also noting we're typing in English here on a Latin keyboard, however my 7y son's taken to his keyboard like a duck to water. We gave him a touch typing challenge to plant some seeds, and he greatly enjoyed it. I benefit every day from touch typing and want him to have the same advantage - I…

Can you point me to that touch typing challenge that your 7 year old enjoyed? Very pertinent to my interests. Also, Python at age 7 seems pretty advanced. My 7 year old is pretty strong with block-based programming but I'm still trying to figure out when and how to transition to real coding.

Nice! It was actually an iPad app that we used, with the Bluetooth keyboard - he was using it for hours.

I'll dig up the app name when I can find the iPad, presently everyone's asleep and the iPad was hidden somewhere. I think it doesn't matter so much which one you choose though, as long as it tells you what fingers you are allowed to use for what keys. The challenge that we set for him was to perform the exercises and getting the fingers right.

He's at the absolute beginner level with Python yet, which we do on the PC, but I figured it was the next logical step as I'm questioning the engagement with e.g. Tynker. He's quick at dragging the blocks across, but the way they template a lot of the lower levels makes it too easy to blindly drag things across until he suddenly hits a wall with something he can't understand.

I'm struggling with the curriculum part of this myself, how to best get his interest and how/when to introduce concepts. So hooking up the Cozmo robot and getting it do simple things is neat way of doing loops for example.

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