BBC Dance Mat Typing

This 8 minute video features the touch typing game for young children hosted on the BBC website, called "Dance Mat Typing".

What you will learn by watching this video

*Dancing Mat is a free website aimed at encouraging touch typing in children.

*It contains 12 stages of lessons, spread across 4 levels, starting with the home keys.

*It is very entertaining and contains fantastic animations, sound effects and clear audio instructions with very charismatic cartoon helpers.

The video includes a full set of subtitles but if you want to read from a full transcript instead then please find one below

Start of Video Transcript

Hello everyone. It is James from the Visual Impairment Team in Devon.

In this video I am going to demonstrate a touch typing game on the BBC website called Dancing Mat Typing.

So that I don’t waste your time, let me quickly tell you what is in the video.

In this video you will learn

Dancing Mat is a free website aimed at encouraging touch typing in children.

It contains 12 stages of lessons, spread across 4 levels, starting with the home keys.

It is very entertaining and contains fantastic animations, sound effects and clear audio instructions with very charismatic cartoon helpers.

First, some technical details. I am using Mozilla Firefox on a Windows 10 laptop, but this website should be accessible via Chrome or Microsoft Edge or on an Apple laptop.

And now, moving onto Dance Mat.com.

Dance Mat is part of the BBC website.

It is a free website that aims to encourage young children to develop their touch typing skills.

It contains 12 stages of lessons, spread across 4 levels, starting with the home keys.

Each stage focuses on a particular letter or group of letters.

So me demonstrate the app to you by playing on level 2.

The design is very colourful as you would expect from an a game that is aimed at children.

Each stage has its own cartoon guide and its own unique scene to practice your typing in.

Level 2, stage 4 features a dancing hippo, called Dainty in an Arabian tent.

The screen is very small but it can be enlarged very easily by using the Ctrl and + keys. This will be important for children who have a visual impairment.

Hands are shown with the fingers on the correct keys.

At the top of the screen are the letters that you need to type.

The middle of the screen is taken up with the keyboard.

The bottom of the screen shows your progress.

The guides show and tell you what to do and they are very entertaining.

Let’s just play the game for a few minutes.

And I think that I will stop this demonstration now.

What do I think?

I love it. Its advantages are that it is pitched perfectly at young children. It is colourful, interesting and humorous with terrific characters at it’s heart. Importantly, it does not display any ads!

It does have some disadvantages though. You cannot create accounts and track your progress.

At times the design is so attractive and colourful that the game lacks clarity- the screen is too busy. This will be particularly difficult for young children with visual impairments.

And, I don’t think that there are enough activities- touch typing is a complex skill and the different stages should be broken up into smaller steps.

Finally, it is designed purely for a UK audience and so there is no option to change the keyboard layout.

But in terms of getting young children interested in touch typing it is a great start.

Thanks for watching my video tour of Dance Mat Typing.

If this video has helped you, please share it with your friends, colleagues  and family.

I have created lots of other videos relating to touch typing and there is a link to my playlist below.

If you have any comments or questions or anything to add to the discussion, please leave them below.

End of Video Transcript