Customer Reviews

Read, Write & Type

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Children learn to type by sound from individual letter sounds to sentences in this program, formerly "Talking Fingers." Read, Write, and Type does very well correlating sounds to letter keys with the help of left and right hand animations that guide the finger and hand placement.
Plan on sitting with your child if you want them to learn to type correctly. The program could have had a few more audio prompts for the typing aspect of the program, such as looking at the screen while finding keys with their fingers, especially when the excercises go from typing one letter to short sentences. You'll need to remind them to relax the hands while over the keyboard to help them reach for the keys and develop dexterity. Another common mistake is that the child presses too slowly, which makes the key repeat many times on a computer, and then shows up as an error, making them repeat the exercise. This IS a program that some children are not ready for, and it can also be frustrating if the child doesn't succeed in the excercises, as they will not be able to move on to the next story. Kids will naturally want to advance in the program's storyline, a catchy chase to earn back (doing typing exercises) all of the storytellers who occupy the keys, stolen by Vexor the Virus, and they will often need someone right there to remind them to "power up!" This is the kind of video game parents of 6-8 year olds WANT their child to play!

I bought this for my daughter since she was using it in her school and she loved the program. This is an old copy from 10 years ago. I could not even find an old PC with 256 colors to run the software. I finally got a hold of talkingfingers.com. They were nice enough to send me the latest version of the software and give me a 20% discount when i told them I had bought this. This is old junk for use with windows 98. Stay away.

My son first played this game in the computer lab at school and begged me to buy it! It teaches typing skills and phonics. Foil the evil blob by typing the letters on the keyboard. He rates it a FUN game!

I am happy with Read, Write and Type. I like that it combines several language arts skills along with typing. It moves slowly, which also teaches listening skills and the all important "how to follow directions" skill. It does not have the fast action of some video games, which makes my 8 year old think its not cool, but he is learning how to keyboard, which is cool.

I bought this assuming it would work with either our 2-yr old Windows PC or our 2-yr old or 5-yr old Macs -- It was only compatible w/ Windows 95 or extremely old Mac O/S and would not work with any of our computers. Worthless and extremely disappointing to my 7-yr old. Beware!!!

I bought this assuming to would be current with my Windows XP-- It was only compatible w/ Windows 95 and would not work.

I have a second grader with dyslexia who needs to learn typing. We started off using Typing with Timon and Pumba and found the program to be horrible. Like many typing programs, it assumed that you are a fast, strong reader. This program was great! Not only did it teach typing, it also worked on reading, writing, and phonemic awareness. All information is presented orally and gets progressively more challenging difficult. My kid is no fool to "educational" video games and is not crazy about most games that teach as you play. That being said, she loves this game and wants to play longer everyday.

After purchasing this game, I realized that it only ran on Windows 95 machines. We no longer have any computers that use 95... I visited the Read Write Type website (http://www.readwritetype.com) and found a fix to the program. It is a simple download that includes installation instructions.

Requires 256 color and won't run on my Windows XP. No patch available on The Learning Company website.

Thanks to the previous reviewer who recommended downloading the free patch from the Read, Write, & Type website, we had this up and running in ten minutes. This is a fabulous program and my 8 year old with dyslexia and dysgraphia loves it. She is gaining a lot of confidence in typing. In addition, typing while learning to read is much easier than writing while learning to read. I highly recommend this.

Like most keyboarding games, it does poorly at teaching touch typing--less than a quarter of the time spent with the program is actual practice, and only ongoing rhythmic practice will build the necessary motor skills. Doesn't allow repetition of exercises until a skill is mastered. OK as frosting, but not highly nutritious. Needs intensive adult supervision for it to be a meaningful educational experience. Most kids don't have the kind of self-monitoring needed to make this an independent learning experience.