[Type to Learn 4 builds critical 21st Century skills for all students in grades K-12
Type to Learn 4 is the newest program in the award-winning Type to Learn series of keyboarding instructional software. Developed on a proven, research-based keyboarding curriculum of sequential touch-typing instruction, Type to Learn 4 builds critical 21st Century skills for all students in grades K-12.
The integrated cycle of review, demonstration, practice, and assessment, with continuous reinforcement of home row positioning, teaches proper fingering for each key with ample opportunity for skills practice. The program emphasizes both accuracy and speed, and provides each student with individualized remediation and goals for success.
This engaging new product wraps keyboarding lessons into an intriguing
world of adventure and information, complete with exciting new activities and redesigned student and teacher interfaces.
Benefits:
Efficient computer keyboarding is an essential lifelong learning skill in today’s computer based society. By instructing students in keyboarding at an early age with an award-winning program like Type to Learn, schools address these essential skills for academic and professional success.
Skills Addressed
- Built on a proven pedagogy of sequential skills-building instruction, Type to Learn 4’s expanded curriculum provides 36 new, leveled lessons complete with:
- Diagnostic pre-test
- Review
- Demonstration
- Practice
- Activities
- Formative assessments
- Automatic, personalized remediation
- Integrated demonstration, review practice and testing:
- Reinforces proper keyboarding position
- Reviews home row keys
- Reviews previously learned lessons
- Introduces new keystrokes
- All letters, symbols and number keys are taught
- Reinforces spelling, grammar, composition and punctuation skills
- Focuses on improving speed and accuracy
Type to Learn 4: Agents of Information is an engaging new product that wraps keyboarding instruction into an intriguing, futuristic world of adventure and information, complete with exciting new activities, multiple redesigned student and teacher interfaces, and appealing, age-appropriate cross-curricular content. The program motivates students toward keyboarding mastery by recruiting them as new members of an ancient society, The Agents of Information. Students discover that our world is in danger of a total communication break-down because information cannot flow smoothly! They must start their training immediately to move up the 7 ranks from Recruit and ultimately become accurate, fast-typing Master Agents.
Activities
Five engaging activities accompany each lesson and provide fun practice opportunities for students to hone their new skills. Each activity focuses on a specific keyboarding skill.
- The Big Ideas activity improves left and right-hand coordination on the keys. Thought bubbles containing ideas need to be typed with either the right hand or the left hand, before the bubbles float away and are lost forever.
- The Drone Control activity encourages students to improve their words per minute speed while typing commands to pilot a drone vehicle through dangerous terrain in order to deliver vital information.
- The Dig This activity uses rhythm to support a typing cadence, as students type accurately to uncover historical information.
- In the Reconnect activity students focus on using the shift key for capitals, symbols, and punctuation, while rebuilding important infrastructure.
- And finally in Get the Message Out, students focus on accuracy as they complete dictation and original writing tasks in order transmit important messages.
True keyboarding mastery requires effective skill transfer from the Type to Learn program into real-world typing environments and tasks. That is why Type to Learn 4 incorporates real-world typing content, including historical documents, literature passages, frequently used Quick-blends and Quick-words, and original writing tasks, in the lessons and activities.
Type to Learn 4 is correlated to the ISTE NETS (National Educational Technology Standards for Students) Technology Foundation Standards and Performance Indicators for Technology-Literate Students. The program also correlates to relevant keyboarding standards in all 50 states.
Assessment:
Type to Learn 4 has an unprecedented amount of assessment built right
into the program. A diagnostic pre-test places students at a specific lesson and sets their beginning achievement goals. Five formative assessments and a 6th summative assessment analyze students’ abilities and progress throughout the lesson sequence, adjusting goals as skills improve. Additional Final Challenge quizzes at the end of every lesson must be passed with goals met in order to progress to the next lesson.
Teacher Management System:
Type to Learn 4 contains an enhanced, user-friendly teacher management system that allows teachers to easily manage students’ progress through the program. Flexible reports display real-time status of all students’ progress, scores, and areas of challenge. Teachers can trigger a diagnostic pre-test to reassess students’ abilities, move students forward or back in the lesson sequence, set an upper limit to the lessons a student can surpass, modify the presence of supports and breaks, and manually select achievement goals, vocabulary levels, and design interfaces.
ESL:
When enabled, Spanish ESL content provides instructions, navigation, support, and reinforcement in Spanish, while the keyboarding lessons themselves remain in English. This provides valuable support to Spanish speaking students as they learn to keyboard in English.
Type to Learn 4 to 3 Comparison
Content
- 36 sequential touch-typing lessons // 25 sequential touch-typing lessons
- Grades K-12 // Grades 3-8
- Complete scope and sequence teaching additional keys: numeric keypad,arrows, more symbols, keyboard shortcuts like Control-C, etc. // Only basic letters, numbers, and symbols are taught
- Significant real-world typing connections to promote skill transfer – including typing passages, historical documents, original writing tasks,and Quick-Blends and Quick-Words. // Limited real-world typing connections
- 2 lessons on keyboard awareness specifically for grades K-2 // No keyboard awareness lessons
Design
- 3 grade-appropriate designs for K-2, 3-6, 7-12. // 1 design for all
- Student personalization of their medallion and host character // No personalization
Assessment
- Diagnostic pre-test places students at the appropriate lesson and goals for WPM and accuracy // No pre-test
- 6 Formative assessment tests spread throughout the lessons; all assessments are cumulative and adjust student goals based on achievement // No formative assessments; Final Challenges in lessons are not cumulative and very short
- Individualized, automatic remediation based on student’s errors // No remediation
- Smarter automatic goal adjustment, based on assessment performance Limited automatic goal adjustment (always 2WPM or 2% accuracy up or down)
- Also calculates adjusted words per minute // Does not calculate adjusted words per minute
- Optional Top Scores list compares WPM and accuracy across class,grade, school, district, state, and all web users // No top scores list
- Option to “test out” of lessons and move ahead // No ability to “test out” of lessons
- New parent report accessed through the student interface // No parent report
Teacher Options
- Ability to add content, including passages and writing prompts,and have them scored // No teacher-added content
- Significantly more customization and accessibility settings // Minimal customization and accessibility settings
Administrator Options
- New administrator level with settings, reports, and management abilities // No administrator abilities
Accessibility
- Built-in ergonomic breaks // No ergonomic breaks
- Closed-captioning of all audio, if selected // No closed-captioning
- Text-to-speech for all text, if selected // No text-to-speech
- Spanish ESL content for instructions, navigation, help, and reinforcement // No ESL content
- Adjust text size, color, and contrast for visually impaired learners // No such option
Minimum System Requirements for Type to Learn 4
Mac:
Platforms: Intel and PowerPC
Operating Systems: MacOS X 10.3.9, 10.4.x, 10.5.x
Minimum Specs:
PowerPC G4 or higher, 800 MHz or faster;
512MB RAM or more;
OSX 10.3.9 or higher;
Minimum screen resolution 1024x768;
U.S. English keyboard.
Recommended: Intel Processor, 1 GB RAM or more.
Windows:
Operating Systems:
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4;
Windows XP Service Pack 2;
Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit).
Minimum Specs:
Pentium 3 or higher, 1 GHz processor or faster;
512MB RAM or more;
Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or higher;
DirectX 9.0c;
Minimum screen resolution 1024x768 at 32 bits;
U.S. English keyboard.
Recommended: Pentium 4 or higher; 1.5 GHz processor or faster; 1GB RAM or more; Windows XP Service Pack 2 or better.
Hard Drive Space (Mac and Win):
Client – 1.5 GB
Server – 400 MB
Server Requirements (Mac and Win):
At least the recommended specs above, or better;
Windows 2000 server;
Windows 2003 server;
Intel-Based or PowerPC Macintosh or any XServe running at least MacOS X 10.4 or 10.5 (earlier versions of the operating system are not supported, such as OS X 10.3);
It is also possible to run the server on a standard Windows XP or Vista machine, on networks which do not have any machines using Windows Server.
Web Browser Requirements:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or 7;
Firefox 2 and above;
Safari 3.1.2 and above (OS X 10.3.9 users must use Firefox or Internet Explorer).
High-speed internet connection (cable or DSL).
Please Note:
1. TTL4 Web Version is NOT a “web-based” application. Students do not go to a URL in a web browser to use the program. The full program needs to be installed to every client machine, including the students’ home computers. There IS a client install. Their data is stored on a Sunburst web server and that is what makes it a web version. That is what allows students to work from either school or home and maintain their scores. Installing the full application to your machine also eliminates performance issues common to other web applications, like server errors, slowness, and lost data, because you are not relying on the internet to run the program. The client install is a GOOD thing.
2. TTL4 is a large program. Each version, standalone, network, and web, is just under 1GB. The large size comes from all the great graphics and animation, and all the new updated features, including the Spanish ESL audio files. The size is not going to go down. Think of it as getting “a whole lotta software” for your money!
3. Because of its size, downloading the application will take approximately 20-30 minutes on a high-speed internet connection. Download times may vary depending on connection speed. This is a 1-time download of about 20-30 minutes on each machine. Not a major inconvenience. We do not support or recommend downloading the program over a dial-up connection.
4. For customers who purchased for hundreds or possibly thousands of client computers, we can provide a silent installer to make the process a little easier. They can then use their own methods to push that install across their network to all client machines. This will not be quick, because of the program’s size, but is also not a Herculean task. If set up to run overnight or over a weekend they should be able to push the program to all machines, no problem.
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