Preface
I remember my childhood days of learning to type some 25 years back on a clackety-clack typewriting machine. Literally one has to pound on the keys to get those impressions done on the paper, has to put some whitener to hide those mistakes or has to scratch the mistakes to powder; oh my good old days! Now I can see those typewriters only in some orthodox government offices and with some oldies.
Things have changed so much in the last 20 years. Computers have taken up everything. The Internet has wired us to a global village. No whitener, no erasers. All have become eco-friendly, using hardly any paper, felling fewer trees. On the hard side, I have forgotten my handwriting. My hands are shivering when I grasp the pen now. Oh Jesus, have I become old? No, not at all. My fingers are always on the computer keyboard nowadays. No wonder, I may end up practicing handwriting again.
Ok, I have forgotten my handwriting but how about my typing? While I am editing and doing quality analysis making those beautiful looking reports of new medical transcriptionists ugly with colors of track changes, I am also losing my typing speed! Just being curious to know my typing speed, I took some online tests and scored only an average of 50 words per minute.
Boost productivity
I type around 50 hours a week if I do just transcription. If I could increase my speed to 65 WPM at 95% of typing accuracy, I would save:
- 1.6 hours a day.
- 11.5 hours a week.
- 51.1 hours a month.
- 601.6 hours a year.
Oh! That’s a whopping 25 full days a year. Equate this 601.6 hours to the number of working days assuming 8 hours of work a day, i.e., 601.6 divided by 8 gives you 75.2 days of working days! Think of converting this extra time into money or holidays! Hence the more your typing speed, the more you earn as a medical transcriptionist. Of course, the other factors like the clarity of dictation and the speed of dictation of the doctor could also influence your typing speed.
Free online typing programs
Practice makes a man perfect. Hence I’m sharing with you some online portals where you could practice more to improve your typing skills. So here are those free online typing programs for you:
ARTypist
AR Typist is an online web portal that helps you to learn touch typing or improving your typing skills. By doing their typing courses, your typing speed will increase notably. They promise you to not only boost your typing speed but also to make you avoid typing wrong characters. If you are interested you could register and access the typing courses that are absolutely free, but you could also access as a guest without registering.
Good Typing
Good Typing offers 27 guided lessons to learn step-by-step from the beginning with the choice of eighteen different keyboard layouts to learn to type correctly in just a few hours using all your fingers. However, registration is required to maintain the continuity of the lessons learned.
Keybr
Keybr offers to train you to type at the “speed of thought!” You can choose from three basic lessons that start with a certain number of keys on the keyboard. As you progress through the lessons, more keys are added to the mix to make things a little tougher. Furthermore, it keeps live track of all your mistakes and your words-per-minute (wpm), and even creates graphs of your performance. Once you find that the lessons have nothing left to offer you, get ready to play with custom mode, where you can edit the text that you want to practice. You can import the content of a web site or blog into Keybr to type it out. For example, you could try importing the articles of Raj & Co or CNN news. This way you can develop your typing skills better.
Learn 2 Type
Whether you’re a typing expert or just a “hunt & peck” beginner, the interactive exercises in this typing tutor automatically adjust to your skill level. The better you get, the more challenging the typing exercises become. You can take the breaks as you please and pick up the typing lesson where you left off once you are back.
Peter’s online typing course
You can begin with Peter’s online typing course, a minimalist one without any bells or whistles. No need to register or provide your identity or any such sort of marketing gimmicks. You could have a humble beginning from zero. However, the only requirement you need to have is free Adobe Flash Player in your system.
Power Typing
Power Typing is an online free typing tutor for Qwerty – the US standard 101 keyboard and Dvorak keyboard – the US alternative ANSI standard keyboard. Separate lessons are available for Dvorak and Qwerty, which enable typing of whole words pretty soon on both keyboards. While learning through the lessons in sequence, you also rehearse the keys already along with adding new ones. The lessons also include instructions for hand positioning over the keyboard.
Type Online
Type Online offers a structured touch typing course for motivated individuals looking to develop their keyboard skills. Furthermore, the author claims Education Network Australia (EdNA) has assessed Type Online and judged the offering to be a quality educational resource.
Typing Dvorak
This course in Flash includes all 29 lessons of Dan Wood’s “ABCD – A Basic Course in Dvorak.” You can map your Qwerty keyboard to Dvorak in the program by just clicking a button. So you don’t need to change any system setting. You can keep an eye on current WPM, CPM, and percent completed live during the lesson. The Dvorak keyboard doesn’t enthuse us, medical transcriptionists. However, it serves the purpose of those in need.
Typing tutor-online
This is a javascript typing lesson web application developed by Egbert Beuker. Apart from Typing tutor-online, he has placed this application on several other portals like Typing lessons-online and Typing course-online.
Typing Web
Typing Web’s typing tutor is completely free for individuals. They have an online typing tutor and keyboarding tutorial. Typists of all skill levels can benefit from their free keyboarding lessons. Engaging content keeps things interested, including daily news headline lessons. However, registration is required.
Finished practicing and has become a master of the keyboard? Confident? Ok. Now take up an online typing certification test and get your official typing certification free of cost online at Typing Web. Further, you can check your speed and race against those ultra-speed experts at Type Racer.
Did you find these free online typing programs useful?
I am taking the challenge of starting over again in the typing field since high school and college is where I began several, several years ago….with the hope that I will be able to pursue my typing skills again!!!!!
Wish you Good Luck.