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Shepherd Chimururi – Interactive Youth Correspondent

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education should consider a policy shift on infant learners’ hand writing to align it with the technological advances taking place in the e-learning and online inspired education system. This noble plea comes in light of the complications the infant learners are facing when learning how to type. Typing as an educational experience is now regarded worldwide a new ‘literacy’ alongside reading, numeracy and writing.

These complications are the reason why most schools are not teaching computers to infants largely considered as pre readers, despite being mandated to do so by the syllabus.

The complications stem from the fact that infant learners are taught to write the print handwriting in their books yet on the keyboard the shapes of letters appear differently.

On the keyboard the letters are styled using the aerial font yet in the books the letters are taught to write the print type of handwriting. The font closest to this type of handwriting is century gothic.

For example children are taught to write ‘a’ which is century gothic font but on the keyboard the letter appears as ‘A’ and when typed in lower case it appears as ‘a’.  This confusion is hurting infant learners and their computer teachers who end up skipping the practical lessons.

Capital letters that have a different shape from small letters confuse learners who do not know the difference between small letters and capital letters.

Another source of confusion is the similarity between some letters and numbers which look identical like ‘o’ and ‘0’.

Besides that when teachers are introducing letters to infants they start with lower case letters yet on the keyboard the letters are in upper case.

This confuses the kids to the last degree.

In addition the arrangement they see on alphabet charts on classroom walls is different from the arrangement they see on the keyboard.

Trying to teach a child to recognise a ‘y’ always comes with resistance from the learner because the ‘y’ on the keyboard has no loop like the ‘y’ they write in the books. Actually there are 15 letters on keyboard that confuse infants. The confusion arises from the fact that in class infants are initially taught in lower case but on keyboard they appear in capital case.

These complications are not just limited to learning typing on the computer.

The same happens when the little learners want to use other information, communication and technology based

learning mediums like tablets, computers and mobile phone.

The default font on these gadgets is different from what the learners are used to in their books.

The million dollar questions now are is it still worth it to continue teaching children something that is being phased out?

What if 10 years from now, writing by hand on paper is as outdated as filling a withdrawal slip in a banking hall?

It might sound unthinkable, but given the current rapid trajectory of e-learning and online learning, handwriting could be history to typing as technology dominates the way students communicate, learn and live every day.

For infants, keyboard is the window to the fascinating passport to the digital world of typing letters, words, sentences, numbers and punctuation marks. Teaching infants keyboard skills is a complex task that requires the teacher to have a clear understanding of the physical and intellectual challenges infants face at their age.

Teaching infants typing is a two dimension challenge — physically, at this stage they still struggle with fine motor skills and eye hand coordination. Intellectually they struggle with recognising shape of letters, identifying the letter by name as well as proper pronunciation of the sound of the letters in a phonetic way – a latest way of teaching children to read. The major challenge is the majority of IT personnel turned infant teachers did not learn phonics at school.

So far no clear explanation has been offered in academic books why two different variants of letters are being used in hand writing and typing and the supposed advantages.

Maybe someone at Ambassador House must explain the advantages of recommending teachers to teach infants to use a hand writing that is different from fonts on the keyboard.

At this juncture it is prudent for the education ministry to set up a commission that will look into the problems inhibiting the learning of computers by infants, the impact of different letters used in books and computers.

Maybe the ministry has to make it mandatory for schools to use customized keyboards which have infant friendly letters that are styled the way they are taught to write in the book.

It does not need a rocket scientist to see that education is evolving rapidly as digital gadgets are making their way through the educational system bit by bit replacing conventional books.

Scholars must begin to wonder about how best teachers can teach a handwriting that aligns with the ICT gadgets.

The above screenshot image shows a child who wanted to type the name Portia. Instead of typing ‘o’ the child used ‘Q’ which is similar to ‘O’ and then went on to use ‘1’ instead of ‘i’ as she could not locate it on the keyboard as it is not there on the key board