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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/110746905@N06/11520240145/ |
I drew a beautiful picture of my family complete with a yellow spider sun and box house and Miss Persy wrote about my family underneath. She asked me to draw underneath her words so I did. A line. All the way around each of her sentences.
I suspect I already could write as I like writing. I know that I didn't make that mistake again.
I remember writing letters to my grandmother and to cousins. We lived overseas for a while so I had a real purpose. It was a treat getting letters back. I wrote little poetry books with sugar paper covers attached with wool bows or staples. I had a lot of fun in Form 1 and 2 where my teacher allowed a group of us to write plays which we even performed on parent nights. These were usually based on books we had read and were definitely collaborative affairs. We carefully copied out the scripts for each other. Purposefully.
Even in the non exam years at high school we had imaginative teachers who allowed us to write the documents for medieval worlds. I remember a dictionary based on Jabberwocky and village magazines based on "The Sword in the Stone." We had copies of a lettering book and carefully traced or copied the fonts.
But I'm not talking about hand writing drills. I remember going over and over letters at my expatriate school but discovering in New Zealand that my letters were not perfect enough. It was a real mission with an ink pen that had a scratchy nib and blotted the paper when I least expected it.
Handwritten essays at senior level were not so much fun. Writing and rewriting to make sure there were no mistakes - and second guessing where the grade or mark out of 20 came from.
By this time I had thrown away the cursive script as unwieldy, unattractive and belonging to my grandmother's letters. I printed neatly but had made my own style with little "a"s that looked like upside down "e"s and circles above my "i"s.
By varsity I had developed a scrawl suitable for taking down notes quickly although I still neatly printed essays, with that same rewriting I felt I needed for a quality product to impress the marker. I remember rewriting job applications many many times in order that the prospective employer would be impressed by my obvious thorough attention to detail.
My fingers still show the disfigured knuckles and sometime callouses of all that pen holding.
Then I stopped writing. I wrote comments on essays as an English teacher and my own banda sheets but I no longer "wrote". No audience, no purpose, no time.
Along came computers. What joy to type a letter which I could revise and send out to friends and family. I loved setting out the Parents'Centre newsletter. Why?
An authentic audience. The ability to write and rewrite. The ability to satisfy my OCD tendencies with a beautifully typed piece of text.
I've promised myself this blog post for some time. I've read arguments about handwriting and typing. I'm not finished and I don't believe any of the pieces of research I've seen are conclusive.
I do know that writing is about joy of expression, meeting needs to communicate and choosing the best available tool for the job - my choice of tool.
I know students who didn't read a book until they wanted to read the road code.
I know students that only write in exams as a means to an end; but they text or use Facebook.
I have seen the "aha" moment on faces when Grandma replies to a post on a blog.
I've heard students talk about the joy of writing on a laptop because they hate their handwriting style.
I enjoyed writing because I was creating. I do a pretty good two finger typist thing and would hate typing lessons just like I hated handwriting drills and other "have to complete" things. You know when you have to fill out a form or do a long survey? No joy there!
My 22 year old daughter completed her degree online. I completed my post grad paper online without ever touching a pen or paper. I actually made a point of it. I didn't want to rewrite text off bits of paper. I hate the piles of paper on my school desk that other folk have given me and that still require homes; while my computer drives are neatly filed and easily accessible.
So if I'm completing everything digitally and online, I wonder how my students will be communicating ten years from now? We worry about the fine motor effects of not writing and the neural pathways that are not being formed, but should we? Are we not making other future focussed neural pathways? Developing our brains rather than our pencil holds?
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typing |
Should We Teach Typing Skills? - http://www.vln.school.nz/discussion/view/892576?offset=20
Pam Hook's collection of research - https://www.diigo.com/list/artichoke/e-Learning/3e4045f4p
Wow, that's perfect timing! I have been thinking lots about handwriting these last few days with various discussions on VLN and Twitter.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I learnt handwriting at primary school. We even had one period a week in y3 I think that was entirely dedicated to beautiful handwriting. I always felt like an utter failure in it. I never had nice handwriting, I just never 'got' it. Reasons given were me being born as a 'blue baby' (probably low AGPAR before they were invented), or the fact that we had about half a dozen student teachers in Y1 as Frau Thiemann had her third girl on 29 February 1980 (showing my age... but I never forgot that date!). Whatever the reason, I have always had shocking handwriting, my husband writes much tidier than I!
In about 1990 my parents bought their first home computer. I had always been an avid (though messy) writer, and this opened completely new possibilities! I still recall my father's cousin questioning whether you could possibly type personal letters; today I do little else than type.
When my first son started school, I investigated handwriting. I was disappointed that children were not being taught joint or cursive writing (I don't really know what the difference is tbh). I felt the lack of teaching this skill would disadvantage them. What I have come to realise since though is that we are simply teaching different skills nowadays. Beautiful handwriting is no longer essential to communicate or to get a good job. To communicate, to collaborate is what is important. Digital technologies are stepping into the space, and little Monika's no longer have to feel like a failure in handwriting class because they can be good in what matters now.
I am still a little worried if all parts of the brain develop as they need to; however, the brain is very plastic and will adapt. After all, writing as a skill in the general population is still a relatively recent occurrence over then millennia of human kind. However, I think it is still vital to give our young children tactile experience, get them to draw, to paint, to touch and create with different textures. In that regard touch screen devices are advantageous over regular GUIs, too. Thanks to Allanah King I have acquired two stylus which I have lent to Junior teachers to trial. I believe at this point in time our young people still need some of the old fashioned writing skills, but like you I am looking forward to seeing what will happen over the next 10 years or so :)
It is an interesting experience reflecting on our own memories of handwriting drills and thinking about how they are relevant to us today. Have they made you a better communicator? We do seem to be centre on tools once again rather than the substance of learning!
DeleteThanks for sharing Monika.