Explore the tablet keyboard online (OTTER)

Some teachers report in the digital VERA3 tests that pupils are still unsure how to use the on-screen keyboard. As a result, they fear disadvantages with open answers.
This is where our online tool OTTER comes in.

OTTER helps pupils in Year 3 to get to know the on-screen keyboard in a fun way. The focus is on using the on-screen keyboard, not the classic 10-finger typing.

In three chapters of around 25 minutes each, pupils learn the most important functions of the on-screen keyboard. In addition, there are 2-minute typing tests with which they can practise what they have learned.

All chapters and exercises can be used independently of each other and repeated as often as required.

In the project, we address the following questions, among others:

  • How confidently can Year 3 pupils type on an on-screen keyboard?
  • How can typing on digital keyboards be practiced effectively?

Pirate Otto Otter fishes a message in a bottle out of the sea. It contains riddles that he solves together with the pupils using the keyboard. The solution points to a treasure island. Full of zest for action, the pirates set sail.

The pupils get to know the arrangement of the letters on the keyboard by

  • steering a ship with the ten most common letters in the German language
  • finding hidden keys on the keyboard
  • filling in crossword puzzles and cloze texts with given words

The pirates reach the treasure island. More puzzles await Otto and the pupils there. Through their decisions, they influence the course of the plot - and thus head for different treasures (the learning content remains unchanged).

The pupils practise typing by

  • deleting incorrect characters
  • making texts legible by using spaces
  • inserting capital letters and umlauts in cloze texts
  • completing dialogs and taps with punctuation marks

The big pirate party is coming up! Nami Otter prepares everything and asks the pupils for help. Together they discover the history of the festival, check out the market and the competition venues and meet up with an old friend.

The pupils practise working with (decimal) numbers and arithmetic symbols by

  • Inserting numbers into cloze texts
  • determining prices using banknotes and coins
  • reading competition results from leaderboards
  • using comparison operators when preparing for competitions
  • using arithmetic operators in factual tasks

Word lists based on the basic vocabulary from Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia were created for the typing tests.

The pupils have two minutes to type out as many words as possible correctly.

The word lists are structured according to different levels of difficulty:

  • the ten most common letters in the German language
  • only lower case letters
  • upper and lower case letters
  • additional words with umlauts and ß

There are also short stories about the characters from OTTER.
Otto, Nami, Rosa, Emre and Karla talk about events in their lives. The pupils type out these stories as quickly as possible.

Teachers can follow the progress of the class in a separate view.

For example, they can see

  • the progress of the chapters
  • the number of words typed
  • differences in typing skills within the class

Teachers can also compare their class with the results of other participating classes.

Teachers have their own access to the OTTER tool. There they can switch freely between chapters or select individual exercises.

The OTTER online tool is optimized for tablets and runs in any standard browser.

No headphones are required.

Access codes can currently be obtained via the zepf VERA3 portal.