Welcome to the Spoken Tutorial on Introduction to Tux Typing.
In this tutorial you will learn about Tux Typing and Tux typing interface.
You will learn how to type:
Accurately, quickly, and efficiently, on a computer keyboard that has English alphabet keys.
You will also learn to type, Without having to look down at the keyboard every time you type.
What is Tux Typing?
Tux Typing is a typing tutor.
It teaches you how to type using interactive games and gradually introduces you to typing different characters.
You can learn typing at your own pace.
And gradually increase your typing speed and along with it your accuracy.
Tuxtyping also enables you to enter new words for practice and set the language for typing.
Here, we are using Tux Typing 1.8.0 on Ubuntu Linux 11.10.
You can install Tux Typing using the Ubuntu Software Centre.
For more information on Ubuntu Software Centre, please refer to the Ubuntu Linux Tutorials on this website.
Let’s open Tux Typing.
First, click Dash Home, which is the round button, on the top left corner of your computer desktop.
The Search box appears. In the Search box, next to Dash Home, type Tux Typing.
The Tux Typing icon appears beneath the Search box.
Click the Tux Typing icon.
The Tux Typing window appears.
Tux Typing comprises the following menus:
Fish Cascade – A gaming zone Comet Zap – Another gaming zone
Lessons – Comprises different lessons that will teach us to learn characters.
Options – Comprises menus that help us to edit words, learn to type phrases, get information on the tux typing project, and set up the language.
Quit – Click to quit the game.
Let us practice to type using the lessons.
In the Main menu, click Lessons.
The window comprising the lesson appears.
Let us start by learning the first lesson.
Click basic_lesson_01.xml.
The window comprising the instructions appears.Read the instructions.
To start the lesson, let us press the space bar.
The window displaying the keyboard appears.
We will now start learning to type the letter a.
Press p to start practicing.
A window that displays the characters to type appears.
What does this line displaying ‘aaa aaa…..’ mean?
You are required to type these letters.
Let us name this line as Teacher’s line.
We now see the English keyboard which is the standard keyboard used most of us.
Do you see the red square around a? It indicates that it is the character that you have to type now.
The first line of the keyboard displays numerals special characters and the backspace key.
You press the backspace key to delete typed characters.
The keyboard also has three rows of alphabets, numerals and other characters.
The second line of the keyboard comprises alphabets few special characters, and the Enter key.
You can press the Enter key to go to the next line.
The third line of the keyboard comprises alphabets, colon/semicolon, and capslock key.
Use the Caps Lock key to type capital letters.
The fourth line of the keyboard comprises alphabets, special characters, and shift keys.
Press the shift key together with any other alphabet key to type capital letters.
Press the Shift key with any other key to type a character given at the top of the key.
For example, the key with the numeral 1 has the exclamation mark on top.
To type the exclamation mark, press the Shift key together with 1.
The fifth line of the keyboard comprises the Ctrl, Alt, and Function keys. It also contains the space bar.
Now let us see if there are differences between the Tux Typing keyboard, laptop keyboard, and desktop keyboard.
Notice that the Tux Typing keyboard and the keyboards used in desktops and laptops are similar.
Now, let’s see the correct placement of our fingers on the keyboard.
Look at this slide.
It displays the fingers and their names. Fingers, from left to right, are named:
Little finger, Ring finger, Middle finger, Index finger and Thumb.
On your keyboard place your left hand, on the left side of the keyboard.
Ensure that the little finger is on alphabet ‘A’,
Ring finger is on the alphabet ‘S’,
Middle finger on alphabet ‘D’,
Index finger on alphabet ‘F’.
Now, place your right hand, on the right side of the keyboard.
Ensure that the little finger is on the colon/semi-colon keystroke,
Ring finger on the alphabet ‘L
Middle finger on the alphabet ‘K’,
Index finger on the alphabet ‘J’.
Use your right thumb to press the space bar.
The two hand images will guide you to use the right finger to type the character.
Wondering what the red circle of the left-hand little finger is?
Your guess is right. You need to use that finger to type a.
Place your fingers on the keyboard as indicated earlier in the lesson.
Now, let us start typing.
As we type, the characters are displayed in the line below the Teacher’s line.
Let us name this the Student’s line.
Now let’s type a character that is not displayed in the teacher’s line.
Do you see that mistyped character displayed in the student’s line?It is not displayed.
Instead an X mark briefly appears on the mistyped character on the keyboard.
Let’s type a few more letters.
Now let us collect the metrics of our typing.
By now you would have guessed what the fields on the left hand side indicate.
Time – Specifies the speed of your typing
Chars – Indicates the number of characters typed by you
CPM- indicates the character per minutes typed by you.
WPM – Specifies the number of words typed by you
Errors – Indicates the number of errors typed by you
Accuracy – Indicates the accuracy of your typing
Press the Escape key twice to go back to the main menu.
We have learnt our first typing lesson!
It is a good practice to first learn to type accurately at lower speeds.
Once, we learn to type accurately, without mistakes, we can increase the typing speed.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial on Tux Typing.
In this tutorial we learnt about the Tux Typing interface and completed our first typing lesson.
Here is an assignment for you.
Switch to basic_lesson_02.xml.
Practice with this level.
Complete typing all the characters in this level and press the Enter key.
Similarly you can practice different lessons.
Watch the video available at the following link http://spoken-tutorial.org/What_is_a_Spoken_Tutorial
It summarises the Spoken Tutorial project
If you do not have good bandwidth, you can download and watch it
The Spoken Tutorial Project Team
Conducts workshops using spoken tutorials.
Gives certificates for those who pass an online test
For more details, please write to contact at spoken hyphen tutorial dot org
Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the Talk to a Teacher project
It is supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India
More information on this Mission is available at spoken hyphen tutorial dot org slash NMEICT hyphen Intro
This tutorial has been contributed by DesiCrew Solutions Pvt. Ltd.Thanks for joining