My 13-year-old wants to learn to type

June 26, 2020 10:50 AM

Do you know of any good online resources/tutorials for a 13-year-old who wants to learn how to type?
posted by shallowcenter to Education (8 answers total)

I think Mavis Beacon is the gold standard ...
posted by mccxxiii at 11:23 AM on June 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

Typeracer is kinda dumb fun once your kid has some skills.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:08 PM on June 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

There are a couple other games, including Typer Shark Deluxe (Steam).

If you or your kid have some disposable income and like weird old gaming hardware, there's also Learn with Pokemon Typing Adventure (Nintendo DS, EU and Australian releases but the DS is region-free).

And, while not all parents would find these appropriate for a 13-year old, there's The Typing of the Dead Overkill (Steam), and the original The Typing of the Dead (Arcade/Dreamcast/Windows/PS2)
posted by box at 12:38 PM on June 26, 2020

Maybe keybr.com could be useful.
posted by sockpup at 1:25 PM on June 26, 2020

When I was practicing on a goofy new mechanical keyboard, I played a fair bit of Epistory.
posted by zamboni at 1:36 PM on June 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

My (just turned) six year old used Mavis Beacon (late 1980s version, downloaded from Archive.org, in DOSBOX), but after a while the difficult-to-read fonts and grating beeping annoyed her so I switched her to Typing Club which she likes a lot better.

(She's at ~12 wpm after a couple weeks of a few minutes a day, so if a six year old can do that, a 13 year old can probably do better!)
posted by dmd at 6:34 PM on June 26, 2020

+1 to Typing Club
posted by potrzebie at 7:06 PM on June 26, 2020

Just a fair warning; the Typing of the Dead series absolutely earns its M-rating. I'd at the very least watch a good chunk of gameplay footage before putting a 13-year-old in front of it.
posted by Aleyn at 4:11 PM on June 27, 2020