gelLabs: the implications of the technological age on traditional teachings of handwriting– what does this mean for our youth?

Some schools are electing to limit teaching our youngest learners the art of handwriting. How is this changing the way they visually recall or communicate ideas through expressive hand skills? This extends to the broader question of: should we save traditional hand skills as it also impacts memory and recall in early neurological development? Should it be saved/demanded and nurtured in early years of development at arms length from technology? We are researching this subject for a series of GelLab initiatives that we think are worth sharing:AbstractA large body of data supports the view that movement plays a crucial role in letter representation and suggests that handwriting contributes to the visual recognition of letters. If so, changing the motor conditions while children are learning to write by using a method based on typing instead of handwriting should affect their subsequent letter recognition performances. In order to test this hypothesis, we trained two groups of 38 children (aged 3–5 years) to copy letters of the alphabet either by hand or by typing them. After three weeks of learning, we ran two recognition tests, one week apart, to compare the letter recognition performances of the two groups. The results showed that in the older children, the handwriting training gave rise to better letter recognition than the typing training.References:Longcamp, M., Velay, J., & Zerbato-Poudou, M. The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: A comparison between handwriting and typing. Acta Psychologica, 119 , 67-79. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.10.019photo: http://expatchild.com/category/expat-education/foreign-language-expat/