TUAW'S Daily Mac App: Typist
When I was in high school in the late 90s, classes such as home economics, shorthand and basic keyboarding were already a thing of the past. I could read my Japanese textbook much easier than my mother's shorthand book from the early 70s. She learned proper touch typing in school while I developed a very fast method of hunt-and-peck that got me up to 73 words-per-minute.
Typist tries to teach basic touch typing. You can take a basic course and then progress to speed drills, longer exercises and the like. Two specific sections focus on the calculator keypad and the Dvorak keyboard.
Typist's lessons are baby steps in touch typing. You get used to having your hands positioned properly on the keyboard, then build up from there. Stats displayed during the exercise show keystrokes-per-minute, typing speed and your error ratio. When you make an error, the program makes a sound to let you know you're off. You can repeat exercises until you're confident enough to move on. The lessons gradually grow more complex as you build your typing speed and capability.
Typist is a free download in the Mac App Store, and it's an excellent program for learning proper touch typing whether you're a student just starting out, or an adult who never learned how.
