I agree the ‘tech-savvy’ phrase has outdone its use. We should use a better phrase, like ‘tech-indoctrinated’ or ‘tablet-fed’ to give a better perspective into these younger kids’ digital lifestyles.
I can see the alphas railing against the term “tablet-fed”. They are NOT gonna like that.
That’s gonna be what us cranky old millennials call them later while we would be yelling at them to get off our lawn. But we won’t yell that, because none of us will own any yards.
Do public schools not teach keyboarding anymore? I ask because I had a keyboarding classe two-hrs 1day per week in grade school plus a full class one year in 7th grade and then again for a full year in high school, and they were always taught by some of the oldest teachers in the school. -My high-school teacher started his career teaching typewriter typing something like three or four decades prior to teaching me in 2004. It seems strange that new young people aren’t getting that same basic education.
I don’t know if they do but if they do I doubt they’ve improved. The technique taught by many touch typing courses is a recipe for a wrist injury. It blows my mind that regulatory bodies aren’t calling for keyboard layout reform. The “normal” row stagger keyboard as well as the qwerty layout should be in museums, not on billions of “modern” computers around the world.
As someone who uses colemak only on my phone because I was curious, what kind of layouts and configurateon would you recommend as a new default?
Funny enough I use Colemak with my ergonomic (split, columnar stagger) keyboards only, and qwerty on mobile (and on my laptop since it has qwerty keyboard labels).
I recommend, in order of increasing effort:
- briefly learn touch typing but then develop your own style with a more relaxed wrist position that de-emphasizes excessive hand movement, uncomfortable movements and crazy pinky stretches
- get a columnar stagger, split keyboard
- learn colemak (I like Colemak DH)
What made you pick Colemak over Dvorak? I am not criticizing your choice, just curious. I chose Dvorak because I found the vowels on the home row cut my hand movement a lot. I fully agree with you on the pinky stretches, that’s my worst movement, which I triage by turning on KDE’s “Caps Lock is another backspace” option.
Dvorak was designed a long time ago for typewriters, i.e. it tries to alternate hand movements, which some people like but many find it makes them slower.
Colemak is meant to be closer to qwerty and was designed for computer keyboards.
Then again I’m sure Dvorak is already miles better than qwerty and the differencesneith Colemak are minor. I think the reason I chose it originally was because of some youtube video but I don’t remember what it was called.
Also I really like the Colemal DH mod.
The tech-savvy reputation comes from the “digital native” narrative i.e. because they grew up with computers they must know computers, which is a silly fallacy because how one interacts with technology makes all the difference. It’s the same reason why everyone who grew up with electricity isn’t necessarily an electrician.
I had to teach some zoomers how to send an email, especially about using bcc, pretty funny I have to say
