Writing by hand rather than typing makes children smarter.
NEW NORWEGIAN STUDY
Children who write often the traditional way, by hand, rather than using a keyboard, learn more and remember it better, a new small Norwegian study claims, at a time when the general trend around the world is for education to be increasingly digital.
The researchers, led by Professor Audrey van der Meer of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who made the relevant publication in the psychology journal "Frontiers in Psychology", studied the brain activity of 12 children and 12 young adults.
The participants wore a special headset with 250 electrodes with sensitive sensors, which recorded the electrical activity of the brain, as they wrote for 45 minutes by hand or typed on the computer.
Hand writing vs. keyboard
As reported in the ADE-MBE, it was found that the brains of both children and young adults were much more active during handwriting than when typing.
“Using a pen or pencil and paper gives the brain more stimuli to retain memories. Many senses are activated when one presses the pen to the paper, seeing the letters being written and hearing the sound of the writing. These sensory experiences create connections between different parts of the brain and open the brain to learning. This is how we learn and remember better," said van der Meer, who has been studying the issue since 2017.
He said it is important that children are encouraged to draw and write by hand from an early age, especially at school. Although he believes that digital learning does have many positive aspects, at the same time writing by hand should also be promoted, even if only minimally.
“Given the developments of the last several years, we risk one or more generations losing the ability to write by hand. Our research and others show that this would be a very unfortunate consequence of increased digital activity," said the researcher.
"Some schools in Norway have already gone completely digital and are skipping handwriting altogether. Finnish schools are even more digitized than in Norway. Very few schools now include handwriting in their education," emphasized Van der Meer.
On the other hand, as other researches have shown, many teachers believe that keyboards create less difficulties for children, who can write long texts on the computer more easily, while they seem to enjoy it more.
"Learning to write by hand is a bit slower, but it's important for children to get through this laborious phase. Using a keyboard involves using the same movements for each letter, while writing by hand requires more complex movements, something important for the brain. If we don't challenge the brain, then it won't reach its full potential. And that can have implications for school performance," countered van der Meer.
Source: www.typotrust.gr
