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Re: [school-discuss] my puzzle about OSS in education



No One wrote:
On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 11:54 -0500, Rob Rittenhouse wrote:

  
TuxType vs Mavis Beacon?)
    

I just have to say that this semester we needed a typing program.  I
tried TuxType2 and found it to a good program, but it doesn't really
compare to Mavis Beacon.  Mavis Beacon helps to teach the student how to
type, TyuxType is more of a game to help re-enforce/improve their typing
skills.  Mavis Beacon really is fairly cheap, though ($5/copy for an
older version at 5dollarsoftware.com), and works well under Wine (though
the installer fails, just use a repackager like InstallRite on a Windows
machine).  What I ended up doing is installing both and the teacher used
Mavis Beacon to help teach them typing, and TuxType for practice.  It
worked well, though I would prefer to use something open source and
native.  None of the native typing applications I tried cut it.





  
TuxType is a cool game, but I found that beginning students discarded good technique to try to achieve speed.  I had great results using Ktouch and Gtypist.  Ktouch is graphic and shows you the keys as you type.  Gtypist is text based, but has gobs of lessons . . . plus shows you speed and errors . . . and you can create your own tests or lessons as well.