WORLD OF LEARNING: HANDWRITING AND LEARNING

"Better Learning Through Handwriting" ScienceDaily 1/24/11

I've posted on this subject before. While this study, by a Norwegian reading specialist in collaboration with a French neuro physiologist, just leads to some initial ideas about how composing by pen or pencil, rather than on a keyboard, might affect learning, it definitely makes the case that different things are happening in the brain when you write instead of type. In an experiment "in which the participants were assigned the task of having to learn to write in an unknown alphabet," those who learned by writing on paper did better than another group that learned on keyboards. The handwriters also showed far more brain activity in Broca's area--speech production.