RealTime Coach

Last night’s class was a blast! All three of our professors were in attendance and helped us set up our laptop computers to work with Eclipse and RealTime Coach. After about an hour and a half of downloading plug-ins and updating Acrobat, we had a quick tutorial on RealTime Coach and we were ready to give it a try.

What a cool program! I know it’s rather expensive, so I’m grateful that I get to use it under the educational license for Colorado Tech.

I know this post is going to sound like an advertisement for RealTime Coach, but I’m really jazzed about using this program. And, for those of you who know me, it takes a lot to impress me. So bear with me. RealTime Coach has a vast amount of audio takes from 40 wpm to 260 wpm. You can choose from a variety of different subjects from medical conversations, legal depositions, and literature. I was typing from Charles Dickens’s novel A Christmas Carol last night. I chose an audio take of 60 wpm. It was a little too fast for me, but RealTime Coach allows you to slow it down (or speed it up) in small increments.

After you complete writing your audio drill, the program will give you an assessment of how you did. It suggests ways to improve your speed. RealTime Coach can recognize your problem areas or if you ghosting letters. It may suggest finger drills or speed drills which, of course, are available in this program too

The problem we had during class last night was that no one thought to bring their headphones! It was very difficult to hear your audio over everyone else’s. So, needless to say, I can’t wait to get home and start logging my practice time!