#mavisbeacon

Download MavisBeacon Teaches Typing 8 & Strategy Challenge (Jewel Case)

While I was in New York a few weeks ago, I realized that a Black woman actually taught me how to type. Well, kinda. I never really pay attention to people when they type to see if their hands are on the home row keys or if they are pecking, but someone was recently watching me.

I was typing an e-mail and my friends sister asked who taught me how to type. In 2013, I assumed everyone knew how to type correctly, but I was wrong. She stated that she she and her son needed to learn how to type properly. I thought long and hard about who taught me because I have been typing for years! Finally, I replied "MAVIS BEACON!".  In 2001, when my mom purchased our first computer, she also purchased Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. I used to love using the program to learn how to type as a 4th/5th grader. It surely helped me ace my 6th grade keyboarding class! (My WPM was awesome for a sixth grader, just sayin) 

What I never thought twice about, was the fact that Mavis Beacon was a Black woman! In 2001, there wasn't much talk about the lack of Black people in computing (or women in computing for that matter) so it wasn't a big deal that a woman of color was teaching millions of people how to type. Well, kinda...  Being the avid googler that I am, I searched to see if Mavis Beacon was a real person and if she was indeed still teaching people how to type. According to wikipedia, Mavis Beacon was a fictional character (insert sad face here). The software developer actually found a Haitian woman who worked at Saks Fifth Avenue to model as "Mavis Beacon". That's why in the beginning I said a Black woman kinda taught me how to type.  Although I know she is fictional, I will still tell people that Mavis Beacon, a Black woman, taught me how to type. I mean, she technically did, right? I was secretly hoping that I would run into her at a conference one day...guess not :-/ It would be so cool to have Mavis Beacon leading the way to get more minority women in computing. She could talk about the millions of people she has taught how to type and talk about what motivated her to do this....if she was real of course. In any case, Mavis might've started getting more minorities in STEM before it was an actual movement.