If

If you’re interested in education, or chiming in on a controversial discussion of whether handwriting is still relevant (or ‘old fashioned’) in the age of keyboard, here’s some fodder:

Why handwriting is still essential in the digital age – by Perri Klass, MD

The key is to pay attention to “early fine-motor writing skills” even in pre-kindergarten. I’ll spare you the sciency details of this article if you are just scanning this blog. But suffice to cite this from the well documented studies that Dr Class cites:

“After the children were taught to print, patterns of brain activationin response to letters showed increased activation of that reading network.”

It may be satisfying to some that this is not an either-or discovery. There is a role for Manuscript writing, Cursive, and Keyboarding – the need for ‘hybrid writers.’

This is a topic that comes up a lot in my work as a teacher, and I will return to it shortly when I get back to work in my ‘hybrid’ computer lab.