Sebran

Letter rain and more

One of the key issues that never fails to 'get teachers going' is the matter of typing and/or keyboarding and the importance that we should place on it. After all, there is certainly a lot of time spent on handwriting techniques!

Teachers have their own ways of dealing with this and for many years I have pointed out to people an application called Sebran - a freeware download from the internet. It is a very small file ( 700 kb), that might just help out. Earlier versions of the software were only in capital letters but now I note that, in the set up options, there is a 'lower case' and a 'mixed case' choice.

More than just a way of improving keyboarding, there are also lots of well-loved games to play that are simply put together and make excellent whiteboard activities.

Better still is the fact that the software currently is translated into twenty three different languages. The program teaches using either Afrikaans, Bahasa Indonesian, Breton, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Samoan, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Turkish, Swahili or Swedish (in Swedish, the droll zebra gracing the main screen is called "sebran").

There is also an offer from the author:
Translators wanted! Has Sebran's ABC not yet been translated into your native language? Would you like to help me with a new translation? All you need to do is to fill out an Excel spreadsheet with all the words and phrases. No programming skills required.