Slice of Life #10 - Is handwriting dying?

I'm sitting at my computer at home, late at night working on what will be a dissertation, some 200 odd pages of research; the culmination of endless hours of reading, research, and application of knowledge gained during courses.

Even though the journey, which will end by December this year, will have taken me 7 years, it is been an experience of life long learning, deadlines and at times headache inducing stress. Would I change this, definitely no.

Interestingly, as I type, I often reflect on my experiences at school, no technology, computers, cell phones, where we used snail mail and handwriting. Where handwriting was treated as an art, rather than a scribble on a page.

Last night, when I was taking a short break from research, I happened to check my facebook, lo and behold two articles appeared on my wall, one relating to handwriting and the other the use of technology (In particular laptops)  in a university  classroom.

Interestedly, as a humanities teacher I do feel that the art of handwriting is dying a slow death, in middle school only 5 years ago the majority of assessments / assignments were written by hand, fast forward we use google apps for everything from email, to text documents, presentations and slides.The New York Times Article succinctly states evidence from research that presents the notion that students who do often write by hand gain skills; "When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas". Do I see this in the classroom, I can emphatically answer yes. 

Next, the second article I would like to highlight revolves around the issue of no tech note taking. The article first gained notoriety when a University lectured tired of students focusing on their laptops rather than on the content during class. He took the brave stepped and banned laptops from this class. He believed that after his experiment, the students notes and assignments were of a much higher quality. 

So the dilemma continues. 


Graphic Source - Michael Mabry