Why Colemak?
Qwerty was originally designed with the sole purpose of slowing down the typist so that typewriters would jam less and not need to be repaired as often. Is this what you're currently using on your computer? Sad, isn't it? Well, Colemak was designed to be easy to learn, balance typing between hands, and keep familiar shortcut keys like X, C and V in place to keep cut and paste easy.
Why not Dvorak? I initially succeeded in touch typing on Dvorak, but found my right pinkie finger was killing me from stretching to reach the L. That was the dealbreaker for me. I noticed other issues though... cut and paste was a real pain and the punctuation was all different and had to be relearned! This is especially unnerving for a programmer who often has to work with special characters in code. However, having said all that, I learned Dvorak on the ABCD Dvorak Typing Course and felt a similar cross-platform typing tutor was lacking for Colemak.
Enter LearnColemak.com. My course is geared to take any qwerty touch typist and turn them into a Colemak typist in just 9 days. It should then take 1-2 months of regular Colemak typing to get back up to full speed again. Each lesson has three parts: initial training of the new keys, quick review of all keys learned, and practice sentences with an emphasis on the new keys to reinforce them. If you have any questions about Colemak, I'd highly recommend first checking out the very helpful official Colemak FAQ, but if you have any questions or suggestions about this course, feel free to contact me: chuck (at) learncolemak (dot) com. I hope you enjoy learning Colemak. Good luck with the lessons!
Join the Colemak revolution and leave Qwerty behind. Your fingers will thank you later!