I Just Learned That They Don't Teach Cursive Writing In Schools These Days.....

[Chiquitita]

154. I'm talking about handwriting

and practicing writing by hand. No doubt southpaws have had to put up with a lot -- interesting unrelated fact: our last three presidents have been left-handed.

I'm a college teacher and I see the difference in performance between students who take notes by hand, and those who take notes on a computer. If I give an end of the class quiz after a 30 minute session the hand writers do better. Why? Because students can type so fast they write down every word, without synthesizing and picking out main ideas -- they write like a transcription and don't do the work of shortening and selecting what to write down. Hand writers are slower and so they think and choose as they jot down.

Here's a take on it from Scientific American: "Students who used longhand remembered more and had a deeper understanding of the material"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/