For anyone looking to get serious about learning CW including the "protocol" for using it on amateur radio bands, check out CWAcademy. It's like a group class setting led by volunteer "old timers" who are passionate about the technology and community. I had no prior morse code experience and successfully made my way up to about 15 words per minute over the course of about 5 months. It takes work and patience, but it's a lot of fun. There's a bunch of arduino-based gizmos and other software that hams have made to simulate and teach morse-code-heavy interactions (shout-out to Morserino, Morse Runner, and Morse Code Ninja).