I am in the 50+ demographic. People my age and older lament that fall of cursive writing in primary grades. The results of the surveys from the Week 9 OER group identifies this skill as a gap in the formative writing process for children in the K-3 primary years as well as low results for training psychomotor skills. Digital tools like Letter School and iWriteWords do an admirable job of letter construction development for this age group, but a finger is not a pencil. Writing with the hand involves a not so subtle difference in brain activity than using a key board – but that difference is significant in the thinking process. The latter has vastly more everyday applications, and I can type much faster than I can write. Perhaps that is the point: writing with the hand is a more thoughtful and reflective process for certain purposes. When I am planning my day or writing in my journal, it’s with pen and paper. Because I a proficient at both writing and keyboarding, I recognize and see the gift of handwriting.
A useful writing technology of the future could be one where students start with large movements and letter formation, then work in levels to to condense the size of their writing to handwriting size. At some point, this would involve the using a stylus as muscle use moves from an arm movement to the wrist and fingers. The stylus could even have sensors on it that require finger and had contact to ensure proper pen posture in order for the next level to be achieved using game-design. I see a significant entrepreneurial value in this sort of a tool, especially for those students who have output issues in secondary school. My daughter was one of those students, and even as a young adult she still struggles and avoid writing.