Super Hyper Spider Typer- Get to Know Your Keyboard

Hello, it is James from the Visual Impairment Team in Devon.

Super Hyper Spider Typer is a free website that develops familiarity with the position of letters on a keyboard using a game format that will be very appealing for children.

The video includes a full set of subtitles but if you want to read a full transcript, please find it below.

Start of Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to this training video.

in this video I want to introduce you to super hyper spider Typer

which is a game that develops the letters on the keyboard and familiarity with them  young children.

so here we go let's click to continue.

now as we start I've got some music playing I don't know if you can hear it.

so you have three levels here easy medium and hard.

so you Can see straight away that the graphics are quite nice it is done in a game format.

it's all very attractive and when you can listen to the music is more attractive still.

so this is the game we have four lizards  it with a letter on their back.

so what you have to do if you have to identify the letter and when you identify the letter and press it  then they disappear.

so you can see that there's plenty going on there's lots of lovely graphics There's a spider going up the left-hand screen there’s scoring  going on I can hear some music  you probably can't hear the music.

you've got to stop these lizards before they reach the end of the branch.

as I touch a letter and the lizard explodes another one takes its place.

So it is all very attractive.

What I would say in terms of the size of it  in a browser you do need to use your zooming keys  to get it to a nice big size so that it is nice and clear  but even then I am not sure how clear those letters are if you've got a visual impairment how easy will they be to pick out on the back of those blue lizards.  T

That could be quite tricky.  there are adverts  running on the site but they are unobtrusive  and they don't really get in the way after you have zoomed.

Visit the site have a go at the game let me know what you think.  Thank you for watching.

End of video transcript

Useful Resources for Super Hyper Spider Typing

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Keybr.com- Free Touch Typing

Hello, it is James from the Visual Impairment Team in Devon.

In this video I review a website that allows you to practice your touch typing for free. It is Keybr.com.

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

Start of Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to this video training.

In this video I am going to do a review of a touch typing website  called keybr.com and you can see the address up here in the address bar Within the browser.

now I am using the chrome Web Browser.  this will work on Internet Explorer and also Firefox  as well.  so it doesn't just work in one browser.

what this is this is a free website for touch typing  and it hasn't got a lot of bells and whistles.  it hasn't got a lot of features to it but I think there's some of the basics well.

 one of the negative parts of it is that there is an advert running along the top of the screen  but then again this advert may be filtered out of your screen any way within your school environment  so you may not be seeing it at all.

now if you look at the screen you have got a keyboard at the bottom  with a photograph of fingers on the keyboard.

and that keyboard is quite clear What are quite clear although they might be harder for some people to see.

Now we cannot change the view we cannot get rid of that keyboard  unfortunately and then sitting above the keyboard  is the text that needs to be typed in  and that is also quite small.

although the keyboard and the text that needs to be typed in are quite small they are on very clear backgrounds  and that part of the website is not cluttered with adverts or anything.  the colours are nice and plain.

and I also think that if we just go in and  see if we can just magnify  we can actually make the letters on the screen larger  and as you can see by doing that we then have to manually move up and down the screen  in order to see the keyboard and the text that we need to type in at the same time.

there are no audio clues as part of this website to tell you what the next letter is to Type in  but you can see that there is a visual marker,  green dot  over the letter that you need to type in.  so that when we type in “o”, “f”  appears and a green marker  appears over the F on the keyboard  the show that to us as well.

so that the general .  now if we go back up and let's go back here  to  let's get the zoom Back Down to.  there we go.

now let's have a look at some of the features  in this touch typing.  there are three levels here-  as level 1 as level 2 and there's level 3.  obviously level 1 is the simplest typing exercises and level 3 is the most complicated typing exercises.

And then what you've got here  is random text or and this is something that I really like custom text and you can see here on the screen you can put in  practice a piece of writing to type  or if you want to practice the string of letters that you want to type  and totally personalize it you can.

you can put the you can put exactly what you want into custom  text box here.

so for instance if I'm in here and you can probably see from the speed of my typing that I could do with practicing touch typing.  so I can put in there some of my own text,  hello my name is James and then when I do  I will actually click on start Those are the letters that I'm encouraged to type in.

and what's also interesting  at first I just went to type in the h  but it didn't like it because I wasn't pressing the shift and the h  because of course it started with a capital letter.

so that's a nice touch it's a shame that there are no audio  clues to this either.

so another part of this is that this will draw  contacts from a website or from a blog  and actually then use that to practice your typing.

So for instance I am a keen fan of the BBC website  and I am on it manyl times a day  so actually if I put in the address of the BBC and click on start and you can see the what it is doing is  the stuff that I've got to type in is actually the text that appears on the BBC site  which is good.

you may have a Blog of your own that you want to practice  used to practice typing this webpage will actually draw the letters  and the words from that blog for you to practice yourself.

so that level of flexibility is fantastic for this website.

and you can change the keyboard layout and you can change the language as well which is another aspect of the flexibility.

fairly fairly simple perhaps part of the visual stuff we can criticise  but in certain respects this is a good website to go back to some touch typing.

Thank you for watching.

End of Video Transcript

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Big Brown Bear Keyboard Game- Get To Know Your Keyboard Better

Hello, it is James from the Visual Impairment Team in Devon.

In this short video, I demonstrate The Big Brown Bear Keyboard Game that is a free website that through the medium of a game allows young children to develop their keyboard skills.

The video includes a full set of subtitles but if you want to read a transcript instead, please find it below.

Start of Video Transcript

Hello And welcome to this training video.

in this training video  I will be reviewing the big brown bear keyboard game.

now as you can see it is nice and clear.

and this is it the whole screen is taken up by a picture of the keyboard.

the font used is really nice and clear  and basically what you have to do is just identify  that letter which is shown by red square  and also down the bottom of the screen.

now lots of clarity a really great size for everyone  but there's not much else happening is there there's no sound effects no animation.

so in that way it is lacking.

But try it out and let me know what you think. Thank you for watching.

End of Video Transcript

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