Disney Mickey’s Typing Adventure Web (Guest Blog: John’s 1st Impressions)
Editors Note: I want to thank John and his daughter for trying out this new program/website and sharing an overview and his thoughts. – Jason
When Jason told me about a typing game called Disney Mickey’s Typing Adventure, I thought it might be an interesting experiment to see if it would catch on with my daughter. My daughter is 2 months shy of 6 years and she’s never really typed before. She mostly uses touch screen based computing such as iPads, iPhones and Android devices. When she sees my laptops, the first thing she tries to do is touch the screen instead of going to the keyboard.
Here’s a quick tour of the program. When you first login you are greeted and given a few pointers.
You leave his Magic Shop and enter the Village.
From the Village, the player has several options. You could start the adventure by clicking on the green arrow. The adventure disguises typing lessons with some fun for the kids.
There are several games in the Arcade. These games are “unlocked” when the player completes certain adventures.
The Library allows the player another way to practice typing by reading and typing favorite Disney stories.
The Academy provides practice lessons and challenges.
There is also a compass on the lower left of the screen. Clicking on the compass reviews many other areas the player could travel in Typelandia. One thing that intrigued me was the reports. It provides way more reporting that you will ever need. Take at the type of reports available:
It also keeps track of your activities:
This game is recommended for kids ages 6-12.
When I first put my daughter in front of the computer screen, she was very excited to see that it is Disney related. She’s been to Disney World and a season ticket holder to Disney Land until recently. Although most of her interaction is with touch devices, she knows what the mouse does and was able to get started with very little assistance from me. The layout of each screen is simple and not cluttered. Of course, she expected something to happen when she clicked on the crystal balls, the magic lamp and the magic hats in the Magic Shoppe. When nothing happened, she thought it was broken. She eventually made it to the Village and asked me what to do next. I’m sensing that she’s starting to lose interest. I suggested to her that she should click on the green arrow and see what happens. She saw Huey, Dewey and Louie pop up asking her to help rescue/free Daisy. I could tell she’s intrigued again and wants to help rescue Daisy. The first lesson teaches the keys, d,f,j,k. She jumped right in but grew frustrated as she hunt and pecked at the letters and took a while to finish. She told me she does not want to do this anymore and asked me to play. We pressed on to the next stage and picked some flowers. She still didn’t care to get back on the keyboard but was content to watch me play. She laughed whenever I made a mistake and a gopher popped up. Not exactly sure if I was timed or if I needed to pick a certain number of flowers to get through this stage but eventually, it came to an end and I was told how many flowers I picked and how many mistakes I made. We continued on with me on the keyboard and my daughter watching. We eventually saved Daisy and that was her cue to find something else to do.
As long as the player is intent on improving his or her typing skills and that is the main goal, this game is terrific. There’s enough here to spur the player to continue on and improve. The reporting option will get the player to try to beat the previous bests. This game is definitely easy enough for kids as young as 6 to pick up and learn but typing isn’t something they need to do at a young age so it might be more applicable to older kids that are starting to do reports on their computers and would benefit from better typing skills. I’m not sure if my daughter would be hopping back on in the near future but I might…I need to beat my previous bests.
For more information or to sign up and play visit http://www.disneymickeystyping.com/