Five Free Open Source KeyBoarding Modules

Are you interested in giving your children practice time on some of those all important keyboarding skills? At the same time, have you made the move to support the open source movement and left those from expensive proprietary operating systems behind?

Today you can easily accomplish both as open source modules continue to explode. If you are operating in a Linux based environment you can offer your kids any one of these five free keyboarding/typing modules to help him or her develop those 21st century skills.

GNU Typist

GNU Typist or gtypist offers a number of typing exercises that will help your youngster learn to type correctly. It has typing tutorials in Czech, English for both the Qwerty and Dvorak keyboard, Russian, Spanish, German, French and Norwegian.

The software allows for the modification of existing tutorials and the ability to create new ones according to your child’s needs and your skills.

TuxType

Designed with elementary students in mind, TuxType is great for helping inexperienced youngsters navigate their way around the keyboard. Offering basic typing lessons as well as a couple of typing games, TuxTyping actually will work with both Windows and the Mac OS X software in addition to Linux.

Klavaro

Klavaro is another free touch typing tutorial that is both keyboard and language independent. The site notes that such a step saves computer memory in addition to time and money.

The latest release offers incredible internationalization: English, Bangla/Bengali, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Urdu and Vietnamese. It also offers the following keyboard layouts: Qwerty, Dvorak, qwertz, azerty, jtsuken and AlphaGrip5.

A basic type of course is available for memorizing proper finger positioning on the keyboard in addition to other exercises that focus on adaptability, velocity and fluidness. To be sure to appeal to the competitive nature of children, progress charts and scoring schemes are available.

Though the software works with both Windows and Linux operating systems, it does not feature game formats, something we think appeals more to youngsters.

TypeFaster

This free typing tutorial comes in three separate versions: Standard, Accessible and Spanish. The site notes that the program focuses on teaching students how to touch-type.

Once again, this free open source option supports multiple keyboard layouts including Danish, Finnish, French, French-Belgian, German, Hebrew (no lesson files), Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese, along with UK-English, US-Dvorak and US-English.

Also featuring a 3D typing game, TypeFaster can score progress and features an option that allows for the practice of the least accurate or slowest key uses. If you want to get the whole family involved, check out the multi-user option that allows each family member their own login which then stores the progress of each user.

TypeFaster also operates on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

KTouch

KTouch is yet another option that focuses on touch-type. Claiming to offer an easy way to learn to type quickly and correctly, the software begins by honing in on a few keys at a time.

KTouch features the keys to press as well as the appropriate fingers to use to hit a specific key. KTouch is part of the KDE-EDU package and is included in most linux distributions that include KDE.