20 years ago, competitive typing became all the rage in the school computer lab thanks to sessions of edutainment favorite Type to Learn.

Second-grade teacher Kimberly Blackert helps Cody Simpson with his touch typing assignment on Oct. 11, 2013 at Horseshoe Trails Elementary School in Phoenix, Ariz. Formal keyboarding instruction ...

Most 2nd graders practice the Christopher Columbus method of typing–“find a key and land on it”–but Guatam Vangipuram’s tiny hands fly across his computer keyboard wit… ...

The benefit of this method is that this is how typing has been taught for over a century. The drawback is that youll have to trudge through nearly 90 lessons before you begin typing natural language.

Experts say 25 lessons, of approximately an hour, are needed to achieve a proficient touch typing skill level.