Ardmore, PA (US), January 2013 - The eLearning for Kids Foundation (EFK), a global non-profit foundation that provides free computer-based learning courses for children between the ages of five and twelve, recently launched the Advanced Keyboarding. Keyboarding is becoming an essential skill in the 21st century, just as writing with a pencil was in the 20th century.
This series of five modules (25 lessons) will provide learners with knowledge of the keyboard and its basic functions, as well as give them the opportunity to become proficient at keyboarding.
Participants will have an opportunity to experience a sequence of dreams that focus on major historical events. Each era will consist of five different, unique story lines that will be randomly selected unless the learner chooses a particular one. This will allow the learner an opportunity to master the concepts being presented in each module.
Most lessons have the following screens: Warm up and Review, New keys, Time tests, Skill building, and Short phrases. Learners can repeat any of the timed tests as many times as they like. For the timed screens, there's a timer displayed to complete the exercise. The results list the number of correct and incorrect characters. The user can go directly to any of the available options from the links provided on the interface (menu, back, help, etc.). Upon the successful completion of each module, the child will receive an official eLearning for Kids Certificate.
This curriculum, part of the Computer Skills topic area, was the brainchild of Nick van Dam, the founder of eLearning for Kids. Once vendor funding was secured, Evoke Development's Robin McClure kindly contributed her instructional design talents to the project. Another partner, Sify, was gracious in providing their development expertise. The beauty of the coordination came from combining all skills and experience. This was Robin's second engagement with eLearning for Kids and Sify's third.
Targeted for kids from ages eight to twelve, it is expected that these new series of lessons will be as popular as the existing keyboarding course because they allow learners to travel through time with Monte while building their keyboarding speed and accuracy. After completing all 25 lessons, learners will earn the title "Keyboarding Master of Letters, Numbers, and Symbols"!
Michael R. Williams, Director of Courseware Development at EFK, commented, "There was an incredible amount of time, effort, and energy expended for storyboarding, reviewing, programming, correcting, etc. The teams worked together flawlessly, and the result is a program that is unrivaled. We have high hopes that Advanced Keyboarding will be an absolute hit. We are poised to help thousands of children reach fluency in their keyboarding skills. This is a really exciting time for us."
Dr. Robin McClure, President of Evoke Development, LLC added, "My favorite part about writing storyboards for EFK is that I get an opportunity to shift my focus from a corporate perspective to that of a child - where imagination, creativity, and wonder are endless. Then, to top it all off, I have been able to meet and work with outstanding professionals from around the world who share the same values and beliefs about education as I do. Volunteering for EFK is a wonderful experience that I highly recommend for every instructional designer and project manager."
Kamal Batra, GM and Vertical Head of Sify Software Ltd. comments, "The Sify team is proud to be part of this brilliant initiative and will always look forward to extending our support for making sure that eLearning for Kids has the best content in the world - and that it is built in a way that it is accessible to most kids on a variety of platforms."
