This study explores the use of keyboarding for writing in the classroom.  Touch typing “is not a simple skill to acquire and maintain, and achieving fluency while keyboarding requires many hours of practice” (Preminger, Weiss, & Weintraub, 2004, p. 194).  The three phases to keyboarding include cognitive, associative, and autonomous.  Benefits to keyboarding and using the computer are found to benefit the writing process through legible, accurate, and more efficient writings.  Furthermore, the authors of the study do find students to be less hesitant to edit their written work, hence increasing the productivity and quality of their work overall.  It was also found that using the computer to type text improves students' attitudes towards learning to write (and communicate).  Alternatively, the study finds that if students are not familiar with keyboarding, their touch typing speed may decrease overall, with the quality of their writing becoming affected. 

This study explores how introducing keyboarding early aids in improving language arts, writing, spelling, reading comprehension, and word processing.  Writing intern develops faster through word processing because essential keyboarding skills emphasize growth in concepts.  “Mastering keyboarding involves learning technique, ergonomics, and key location” (Zeitz, 2007).  The author suggests using instructional software in order to target skills of keyboarding along with other computer activities in order to increase students’ overall touch typing success. This article will influence research because it shows how keyboarding skills aid typing from the thought process directly onto the computer.  In mastering keyboarding, technique is found to be the most important element when learning, practicing, and applying touch typing to any platform. 

This study is great for research because it looked specifically at the instruction of keyboarding to students.  Even though the study was conducted on the elementary level, it is relevant because the specific areas of touch typing curriculum studied included time allocation, software/textbook usage, reinforcement strategies, and environmental setting of students. The traditional ‘hunt-and-peck’ method of typing is found to be inefficient for students in today’s society, however through learning touch typing in the classroom student’s benefit in a variety of ways.  Furthermore, research from Rogers, Laehn, Lang, O'Leary,  and Sommers (2003) expresses how touch typing aids in improvement in language arts (reading, spelling, and writing ability), techniques for the computer, motivation, creative thought, preparation for the future, and in cross-curricular areas.

This article will be beneficial to this study because it explores the attributes of twenty-first century curriculum and natural ways in which to integrate technology into the classroom.  As technology changes the nature of the classroom it can also better meet the needs of todays’ millennial students and aid in supporting a modern twenty-first century curriculum.  The skills identified to be taught include the following; digital age literacy, technological literacies, effective/interactive communication, and high productivity, to name a few (Cramer, 2007, p.128).  The article also reiterates the importance of how technology and learning objects can be used to transform learning in the classroom.